
Class __X7-^-^ 

Book AA/J^O- 

GopghtN^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



BOSTON DAYS 



LILIAN WHITING'S WORKS 



The World Beautiful. First Series 
The World Beautiful. Second Series 
The World Beautiful. Third Series 
After Her Death. The Story of a Summer 
From Dreasiland Sent, and Other Poems 
A Study of Elizaheth Barrett Browning 
The Spiritual Significance 
Kate Field : A Record 
The World Beautiful in Books 
Boston Days 



BOSTON DAYS 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 
CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 
THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 
DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

By LILIAN WHITING 

AUTHOR OF "THE WORLD BEAUTIFUL," FIRST, SECOND, 

AND THIRD SERIES; "KATE FIELD: A RECORD;" 

"A STUDY OF MRS. BROWNING;" "THE 

SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE," ETC. 



' Tell men what they knew before 
Paint the prospect from the door^ 



BOSTON ' LITTLE, BROWN 
AND COMPANY • MDCCCCII 



THF USRAiW OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two CtlPici RcCKIVED 

CL*R« «. XXa No. 

U-^ ^- C 

COPY 8. 



Copi/rigTit, 1902, 
By Little, Brown, and Company, 



^W rights reserved 



Published December, 1 902 






UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



TO 

CHARLOTTE WHIPPLE 

(Mrs. Edwin Percy Whipple) 

WHOSE LIFE HAS BEEN ENSHRINED IN BOSTON'S 

GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS, THIS RECOKD 

OF ITS BEAUTIFUL DAYS IS 

INSCRIBED WITH THE 

DEVOTION OF 

LILIAN WHITING 



" The fountains of my hidden life 
Are through thy friendship fair " 




TO THE READER 

|HE aim in this volume is simply to present 
some transcripts of the remarkable life in 
Boston during the nineteenth century, — the 
latter years of which came within the personal observa- 
tion and experience of the writer, and nearly all of 
which is, or has been until recently, within the 
memory of people yet living. It is not the design to 
attempt any history of literature, or specific biographical 
record, — but only to read backward, like the Chaldeans, 
some of those " delicate omens traced in air," — to in- 
terpret some of that mystic handwriting on the wall 
which, traced in the invisible ink of spiritual record by 
the great and good whose theatre of action was in this 
city, yet reveals itself as in letters of light, to the vision 
of sympathy and of reverence. It is the Boston whose 
" hierarchy was based on education, public service, and 
the importance of the ministry," — on culture, philo- 
sophic thought, literary art, and the ethics of spirituality, 
— which is studied in these pages. Boston was planted 
in prayer, and nurtured by spiritual uplifting. Cotton 
Mather, an ancestor of the writer of these pages, records 



TO THE READER 



ill his " Magnalia " : *" T is possible that our Lord Jesus 

Christ carried some thousands of Reformers into the 

Retirement of an American Desert on purpose that with 

an opportunity granted unto many of His Faithful 

Servants to enjoy the precious Liberty of their Ministry 

. . . He might then give a specimen of many good 

things which He would have His churches elsewhere 

aspire and aim unto, and this being done He knows 

not whether there be not all done that New England 

was planted for." 

Reverently may it be said that it doth not yet appear 

what greatness may await the Boston of the future, 

with her present wonderful activity in commercial and 

industrial development ; in extension of her residence 

regions by means of her splendid system of local transit ; 

in the growing strength of her institutions, in the power 

and influence of her citizens ; but in one quality must 

the Boston of the Past and the Boston of the Future 

forever be united in identity, — the quality that has made 

her and will forevermore keep her to be the City of 

Beautiful Ideals. 

L. W. 



The Brunswick, 
Boston, August, 1902. 



CONTENTS 

I. 

The City of Beautiful Ideals .... 3 

11. 

Concord, and Its Famous Authors . . 103 

III. 

The Golden Age of Genius 201 

IV. 
The Dawn of the Twentieth Century . 325 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Phillips Brooks Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Dr. Samuel J. Miiter 

Boston Common and the State House Page 3 

Facsimile of a letter from John G. Whittier to 

Edwin P. Whipple "63 

Facsimile, " The Rainy Day," by Henry W. Longfellow " 83 

The Old Manse, Concord "108 

The Orchard House "140 

Louisa M. Alcott "150 

From a crayon by Stacy Tolman, now first reproduced 

Facsimile of a letter from Henry W. Longfellow to 

Edwin P. Whipple "203 

Edwin P. Whipple "209 

From an original painting 

Facsimile of a letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes to 

Mrs. Whipple "216 

Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple "220 

From a crayon drawing 

Facsimile of a letter to Edwin P. Whipple from Ralph 

Waldo Emerson and others " 230 

Facsimile, " The Chambered Nautilus," by Oliver 

Wendell Holmes "249 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Julia Ward Howe Page 268 

From an early photograph 

Facsimile, " Power reft of aspiration," by Julia Ward 

Howe "273 



Facsimile of a letter from Rev. Edward Everett Hale 
to Edwin P. Whipple 

Winifred Howells 

From a painting by Helen M. Knowlton. 

Trinity Rectory 

Trinity Church 

"Identity," a picture by Elihu Vedder for Aldrich's 
poem 

Sarah Holland Adams 



280 
311 

341 

424 

437 
441 



From a photograph. 

The facsimiles are from manuscripts in the possession of 
Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple. 



I 

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 



Spirits, with whom the stars connive, 
To work their will." 

Every thought is public ; 
Every nook is wide. 
The gossips spread each whisper 
And the gods from side to side. 

Emerson. 




^ 
-§ 
« 



aq 




BOSTON DAYS 

THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 

" Tliou slialt make thy house 
The temple of a nation's vows." 

|OSTON is, essentially, the City of Beautiful 
Ideals, and the mot that it is a condition 
and not a locality is not without its claim 
to literal acceptance. It is a fact so remarkable as to 
be unparalleled in the history of any nation that so 
large a number of eminent persons should be born 
within a period of hardly more than twenty years in 
or near one city, all of whom should be drawn to it 
by some law of spiritual magnetism, as the scene to 
be identified with their work and life. Although Mr. 
Alcott was born in Connecticut, Mr. Longfellow in 
Maine, Mrs. Howe in New York, and a few others 
of the group were born outside Boston, yet, prac- 
tically, they are all Bostonians in the sense of sym- 
pathy with the genius loci, and of their directive power 
as great leaders of thought. Between 1799 and 1823 
there appeared a wonderful group that included Alcott, 
Emerson, Allston, Lydia Maria Child, Hawthorne, Eliza- 
beth Peabody, Dr. Hedge, George Ripley, George 
Bancroft, John Lothrop Motley, Eufus Choate, William 



■j 



BOSTON DAYS 



Lloyd Garrison, Robert C. Winthrop, Longfellow, Whit- 
tier, Prof. Benjamin Peirce, Margaret Fuller, James 
Freeman Clarke, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, 
Thoreau, Lucy Stone, Charles Sumner, James Russell 
Lowell, Edwin Percy Whipple, Julia Ward Howe, 
James T. Fields, Mary A. Livermore, Abby Morton 
Diaz, Edward Everett Hale, Francis Parkman, Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson, and Ednah D. Cheney. 

This group is a constellation of the Nineteenth cen- 
tury whose illumination has not faded as one by one 
they have nearly all passed on into the Silent Land. 
The presence of Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. 
Diaz, Dr. Hale, Colonel Higginson, and Mrs. Cheney 
still charms the hour and radiates its inspiration to 
countless currents of life. 

In that impressive creation of Mr, St. Gaudens, 
the statue of "The Puritan," standing with a staff 
held in one hand and a Bible under his arm, there 
is typified the spirit in which Boston was founded. 
The story of the Puritan capital is a veritable ro- 
mance ; it is the story of the fire that came down 
from Heaven to make itself the living coal on the 
altar; of life always invested with a certain stateli- 
ness as befitting a people of "quality and eminent 
parts." From those days of 1630 when John Win- 
throp wrote to his wife in England, " We are in 
Paradise where we enjoy God and Jesus Christ; is 
not this enough?" when that saintly young divine, 
John Harvard, with his slender endowment of eight 
hundred pounds and with the untold richness of his 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 5 

endowment of faith and prayer, founded a college in 
the wilderness ; from those days to these of the Twen- 
tieth century, the story of Boston has not been less 
wonderful than that of old when Moses led his people 
into the Promised Land. 

The coming of Cotton and Increase Mather and of 
the Rev. John Cotton was an event of incalculably 
far-reaching influence. Mr. Cotton was followed by 
one of his most devoted parishioners, a woman whose 
strong individuality impressed itself on the life of 
the colony. This was Mistress Anne Hutchinson, 
the Mary Livermore of her day. Governor Winthrop 
characterized her as " a godly woman and of special 
parts, who had lost her understanding by occasion of 
her gi\ing herself wholly to reading and writing; 
whereas, if she had attended to her household affairs 
and such things as belong to women, and had not gone 
out of her way and calling to meddle in such things 
as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, she 
had* kept her wits and might have improved them 
usefully and honorably in the place God set her." 

Mistress Hutchinson was as indomitable as Lucy 
Stone or Mrs. Livermore, and she brought to bear a 
strong and determining influence. She was essen- 
tially a modern woman, three centuries in advance of 
her time. She had the same wonderful power to 
attract, to impress, to influence people and events 
that is so peculiarly the gift of Mrs. Livermore. 
Anne Hutchinson was a born mystic, a Transcenden- 
talist, and a holder of a belief not unlike that now 



BOSTON DAYS 



springing up under many phases and names, and 
everywhere recognized as the highest interpretation of 
spirituality. She believed in the direct intercourse 
between the individual and the Divine Spirit, which 
the Puritan clergy held to be a sacrilege and a heresy. 
They regarded the doctrine of " inner light " as a pecu- 
liarly objectionable heresy, and when Mistress Hutch- 
inson " claimed to have evolved a knowledge of the 
Divine will from her inner consciousness" they de- 
nounced it as blasphemy. She was a born social 
leader, and as the only life of that day was the re- 
ligious life, — there being no newspapers, no dances, 
parties, theatres, concerts, or libraries, — nothing but 
the Sabbath services, followed by the church meet- 
ings and the Thursday lectures. Mistress Anne called 
together her women friends (" females," in the quaint 
phraseology of the day) and preached to them, giv- 
ing them an enthusiastic version of the Rev. John 
Cotton's latest sermon, with sundry original additions 
of her own. She became the fashion, the craze, the 
fad of her day. But the stern and narrow Puritan 
spirit rejected her : has not the world always stoned 
its prophets ? The home of Mistress Hutchinson was 
on the site of the Old Corner Bookstore, and of 
her personal power Mrs. Caroline H. Dall wrote : — 

" Her weekly lectures appear to have fascinated those 
who listened. She was richly endowed with wisdom and 
grace. She exhibited great inward resources and a 
saintly patience. The class of thinkers to which she 
belonged recognized the profoundest spiritual truths. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 7 

She had a -wonderful memory, and no slight power of 
abstract statement and generalization. At her meetings 
there was perfect freedom of remark and question, — a 
fascination in itself, for the dictum of the churches ad- 
mitted neither. In her parlors objections might be 
offered. The neighboring towns rang with her praises ; 
the women who were so fortunate as to hear her reported 
her sayings. Even John Winthrop said, ' She hath a 
ready wit and a bold spirit.' " 

The Eighteenth century was a very important and 
determining period in Boston life. Benjamin Franklin 
was born in January of 1 706, on Milk Street, his father's 
home being on the site once occupied by the office of 
the " Boston Post." Cotton Matlier, who had become a 
minister of the Second Church in 1G84, died in 1728, 
but his influence permeated the entire century, and it is, 
indeed, in the air to-day. In this great divine were 
united the names and the characteristics of the Mathers 
and the Cottons. His father was Dr. Increase Mather, 
pastor of the North Church, and, later. President of 
Harvard. His mother was Maria Cotton, a daughter 
of the Rev. John Cotton. Cottou Mather was born in 
Boston in 1663, and, in the quaint phraseology of his 
biography, " when he was half a year short of nineteen 
he proceeded master of arts, and received his degree at 
the hand of his father, who was then president." His 
tomb at Copp's Hill is the most noted one in the 
grounds, and the heavy slab of stone covering the vault 
where lie the bodies of the Rev. Drs. Increase, Cotton, and 
Samuel Mather bears simple inscriptions of names and 



BOSTON DAYS 



dates. During this century Peter Faneuil gave to the 
city the hall now bearing his name ; the first newspaper 
was founded ; and the settlement presented the appear- 
ance of an active trading town. The cows were still 
pastured on the Common ; but the social life held its 
rigid traditions of etiquette, and the ladies went their 
rounds in a chaise with one horse, attended by a colored 
servant, and in the early evening, after tea, for all 
Boston dined at midday, they walked on the Mall ; and 
" those not disposed to the evening lecture " adjourned 
to one another's houses. Great regard was paid to 
what they termed "gentility." Their ideas of enter- 
tainment are typified by a record in Judge Sewall's 
diary, which runs : — 

"I went to-day to look at my vault. It was an 
awful but pleasing treat. Having said ' the Lord knows 
who shall be brought hither next,' I came away." 

Social rivalries were not unknown in these times. 
That sturdy patriot, Samuel Adams, said of John 
Hancock, whose display of wealth he indignantly de- 
nounced ; " John Hancock appears in public in the 
state and pageantry of an Oriental prince. He rides in 
an elegant chariot attended by four servants in livery." 

The Boston of Revolutionary days is so familiar in all 
history that it may here be passed with little reference. 
During those years the story of Boston was identical 
with the story of the nation. It was a vital part of the 
national progress and has become as familiar as the 
alphabet. The local patriotism was strong and fervent ; 
and at the close of the war there set in a new era of 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 9 

progress whose trend became distinctively that of intel- 
lectual and literary culture. 

Meantime journalism developed rapidly; a railroad 
was built from Boston to Worcester and another pro- 
jected southward to run through Dorchester, which 
brought out vigorous demonstrations of remonstrance. 
The residents of Dorchester declared that a railroad 
would be the ruin of business. Lucy Stone, when talk- 
ing of the opposition to woman suffrage, used often to 
relate with glee the indignant alarm felt by the people 
at the prospect of a railroad. " The cattle and the 
sheep grazing on the plains would be frightened to 
death," they said, " and the milk would be ruined." 
This curiously conservative element has always persisted 
in Boston, from the time of that remonstrance against a 
steam railway to that vigorous remonstrance in 1894 
against granting a charter to Radcliffe College (which, 
happily, did not prevent its being done) ; and remon- 
strance meetings of women, protesting against political 
duties, consume, apparently, more time and energy than 
all the political duties they could undertake in a 
lifetime. 

The Nineteenth century opened as we have seen, with 
the appearance of a remarkable galaxy of men and 
women. 

William Lloyd Garrison, who was destined to play so 
potent a part in national progress, became conscious in 
his earliest youth of the work to which he was divinely 
commissioned, — that of freeing his country from that 
" sum of all villanies," human slavery. The wealth, in- 



10 BOSTON DAYS 



fluence, and social prestige of his native city were arrayed 
against him. Little did he consider it, for is not one 
with God a majority? In an obscure room up many 
flights of stairs this youth of nineteen set up the type of 
his paper, '' The Liberator." He called meetings and 
proclaimed his message. The story of those days when 
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Lydia Maria Child and 
the little band of brave reformers who gathered around 
them, held their meetings in Boston, — entering by back 
doors, leaving by circuitous routes, and literally taking 
their lives in their hands, — is a subject for the tragic 
muse. 

Among the remarkable group who were destined to 
contribute so largely to the formative influences of their 
century, the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop was a distin- 
guished figure, and one who illustrated a marked type 
of New England life. There have been two distinctive 
and contrasting types of life here, each of which has 
contributed to the fruition of latter-day culture. The 
one, that of material poverty, transfigured by qualities of 
intellect and spirit ; the other, that of inherited wealth 
and its attendant refinement of external environment. 
The majority of men whose names are the glory of New 
England have belonged to the former. Dr. Edward 
Everett Hale says that his boyhood belonged to the 
time when a gentleman could do anything, and there 
was no task he might not ennoble. Emerson cut wood 
during his college life to assist his progress. Plain 
living and high thinking were a badge of culture. 
Again, there were those who were born in the purple. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 11 

sons of inherited wealth, and among these were Wendell 
Phillips and Robert C. Winthrop. Independent of any 
necessity of earning a living, Mr. Winthrop had all his 
time to devote to the culture of his scholarly tastes. 
He belonged to a family whose name was one of the 
illustrious group of Bradford, Endicott, Winslow, and 
Winthrop. His ancestry includes many eminent names. 
Robert Charles Winthrop was born in Boston on 
May 12, 1800, and graduated from Harvard in the 
famous class of '29. The achievements of his life were 
purely those of statesmanship, which differs very widely 
from politics ; and as a statesman it is perhaps criti- 
cally true that he barely missed greatness, or, at least, 
the greatness that impresses itself as permanent fame. 
Perhaps his culture w^as a trifle too symmetrical to force 
itself in any one direction sufficiently to act immediately 
upon affairs. All the latter years of his life he was 
easily the first citizen of Massachusetts. Wealth, 
honors, troops of friends, surrounded him. Yet Clay, 
Webster, and Sumner have fame more purely national. 
Mr. Winthrop was all his life a conservative, — with 
faultless taste, with intellectual power, with eloquence 
and elegance of address, with great charm of manner ; 
but the one grain of magnetism — or of madness per- 
haps — that is required for greatness was lacking in his 
symmetrical character. Whatever the impediments, 
however, in his nature and temperament, to the bringing 
a decisive influence to bear on the country at large, Mr. 
Winthrop was an ideal private citizen. His life was 
marked by scholarly pursuits in classic study, in historic 



12 BOSTON DAYS 



research, and in literary enjoyment and appreciation ; 
by a fine religious sense, by moral dignity, and by social 
grace. His home was a centre of exquisite courtesy 
and gracious hospitality. On Washington's birthday, 
each year, it was his custom to receive every person, 
man, woman, or child, who cared to come to his house. 
It was an occasion so unique as to live forever in the 
social history of Boston. The manner of Mr. Winthrop 
suggested the French noblesse. A nobleman of the Fau- 
bourg St. Germain might have received all Paris as Mr, 
Winthrop did all who in his own city came to greet him. 
He had two homes, — a town house in Marlborough 
Street and a beautiful estate in Brookline. They are 
both historic homes, in which are gathered associations 
from the days of John Winthrop, his ancestor, and they 
abound in books, many of rare editions and exceptional 
copies, and in art and souvenirs of foreign travel. 

Mr. Winthrop was a lifelong communicant of Trinity 
Church, and it was largely due to his influence that 
Phillips Brooks, in 1869, accepted the call to Boston. 
Between the rector and his distinguished parishioner 
there was a devoted friendship ; and on the approach of 
the ceremonial of the consecration of Dr. Brooks to the 
Episcopate, he wrote to Mr. Winthrop saying : " Your 
presence will be the crowning token of the kindness and 
Christian friendship which you have given me all these 
years." Although some thirty yeaj-s the senior of Dr. 
Brooks, Mr. Winthrop outlived his friend and rector. 

Nothing more typically represents the Boston of 
the Nineteenth century than the Athenaeum Library. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 13 



Here the portraits of distinguished Bostonians look 
down from the walls, and their busts adorn long rows 
of pedestals on three sides of the upper reading room, 
with its book-lined alcoves. The very atmosphere holds 
the tradition and remembrance of the great and good, 
whose special resort it has always been. Henry James 
has laughed at the enthusiasm of the early Bostonians 
over the attenuated outlines of Flaxman, who first 
represented foreign art to this sesthetic circle ; and the 
visitor of to-day may smile to recall the serious devo- 
tion with which Margaret Fuller sat before the few 
casts and the paintings of Allston, to record her 
*' Impressions." 

Evidently, the lovers of Art made up in enthusiasm 
for what they lacked in pictorial subjects, for we find 
Mary Peabody (later Mrs. Horace Mann) writing 
to her sister Sophia (Mrs. Hawthorne) as follows : — 

June 19, 1833. 
I went to Dr. Channing's yesterday afternoon and 
carried him your drawings, with which he was so en- 
chanted that I left them for him to look at again. He 
gathered himself up in a little striped cloak, and all 
radiant with that soul of his, said with his most divine 
inflection, " this is a great and noble undertaking and 
will do much for us here." And then he rolled his eye- 
brows upon me in that majestic way of his, which, when 
it melts into a loveliness, as it sometimes does, soon takes 
captivity captive. In short, he was quite in an extasy 
with you. He showed me all the new books he had just 
received from England, which he thought a great imposi- 
tion, they being big books. Edward came in, and they 



14 BOSTON DAYS 



greeted afifectionately. After a long survey he exclaimed, 
"why, Edward, you look gross — take care of the 
intellect ! " . . . 

The doctor, in the simplicity of his heart, never thinks 
of feelings, only of things, as Plato would say. 
Your affectionate sister, 

Mary. 

Dr. Chanuiug was the great preacher of that day, 
and Boston society was largely of the Unitarian, or the 
Orthodox Congregational Faith. A little later Theo- 
dore Parker's great work was to come, and still in the 
undiscerned future lay the marvellous influence and 
power of Phillips Brooks. INlusic was already a factor 
in social life, and occasionally a Beethoven symphony 
was rendered. Modern languages were cultivated, and 
with the " Conversation Classes " of Margaret Fuller, 
and the influence of Dr. Hedge and James Freeman 
Clarke, came a strong impulse toward German litera- 
ture. Margaret Fuller translated Goethe's " Conver- 
sations with Eckermann," and Elizabeth Peabody, in 
her bookstore, imported works of German philosophy. 
" In fact," says Mrs. Howe, recalling those days, 
" Boston had a reputation for pedantry that it did not 
desire nor deserve." There was, according to Mrs. 
Howe's recollections, " a certain reserve which charac- 
terized the hospitalities and general intercourse of that 
day. In the Boston of that time," she continued, 
" the gentlemen of business did not go far from the 
city in the summer, and there were a number of very 
beautiful countrv seats in the neighborhood. Strangers 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 15 

coming to the city with proper introductions were 
invited to visit families at their country residences, on 
which occasions they were generally entertained with 
fruit and wine, the afternoon tea being then undreamed 
of." 

Mr. Allston was the celebrated painter in that period. 
His charm of presence not less than his genius drew 
around him a beautiful circle in which Elizabeth Peabody 
and Franklin Dana were among his nearest friends, and 
of an exhibition of his work, Miss Peabody wrote : — 

" These pictures of Allston's, in combination, form a 
great whole, which has a peculiar interest as a ivhole. 
Ahnost all communication of one miud with others is 
partial. You are made aware of different departments at 
different times. But here, at one glance, you take in 
the whole of a great mind, and are rendered silent in 
reverence." 

The founding of the Lowell Institute, whose lecture 
courses were initiated by Edward Everett, on the last 
day of 1839, and whose work has from that date to 
the present been one to reveal the most important 
discoveries in physics, the results of the deepest re- 
search into history, archseology, or the most advanced 
thought in art, literature, and philosophy, — was an 
epoch-making event. From this platform have been 
heard Dr. Silliman, Asa Gray, Agassiz, Cornelius 
Conway Felton, Dr. Holmes, Lowell, George William 
Curtis, Edwin Percy Whipple, Professor Benjamin 
Peirce, Charles Eliofc Norton, Robert C. Winthrop, 
Edward Everett Hale, William Dean Howells, Prof, 



16 BOSTON DAYS 



John Tyiidall, Dr. Brown-S^quard, Proctor the as- 
tronomer, Charles Francis Adams, Frank B. Sanborn, 
Bayard Taylor, William James, p^re et fils. General Di 
Cesnola, James Freeman Clarke, Alfred Russel Wallace, 
and, in later years, Professor Lauciani, Henry A. Clapp, 
John Fiske, Dr. Henry Drummond, Protap Chunder Mo- 
zoomdar. Prof. William T. Sedgwick, Percival Lowell, 
Rev. Dr. E. Winchester Donald, Prof. Arlo Bates, 
Felix Adler, Professor Darwin (the son of Charles 
Darwin), and many others of world-wide fame. 
Of the early decades Dr. Hale has said : — 

" Here was a little community, even quaint in some of 
its customs, sure of itself, and confident in its future. 
Generally speaking, the men and women who lived in it 
were of the old Puritan stock. This means that they 
lived to the glory of God, with the definite public spirit 
which belongs to such life. They had, therefore, absolute 
confidence that God's kingdom was to come, and they saw 
no reason why it should not come soon. As a direct result 
of this belief and of the cosmopolitan habit which comes 
to people who send their ships all over the world, the 
leaders of this little community attempted everything on 
a generous scale. If they made a school for the blind, 
they made it for all the blind people in Massachusetts. 
They expected to succeed. They always had succeeded. 
Why should they not succeed ? If, then, they opened a 
'House of Reformation,' they really supposed that they 
should reform the boys and girls who were sent to it. . . . 
There was not an ' ism ' but had its shrine, nor a cause 
but had its prophet. . . . The town was so small that 
practically everybody knew everybody. ' A town,' as a 
bright man used to say, ' where you could go anywhere in 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 17 

ten miuutes.' Lowell could talk with Wendell Phillips, 
or applaud him when he spoke. He could go into Garri- 
son's printing-office with a communication. He could 
discuss metaphysics or ethics with Brownson, and hear 
a Latter-Day Church preacher on Sunday. He could 
listen while Miller, the prophet of the day, explained 
from Rollin's History and the Book of Daniel that the 
world would come to an end on the twenty-first of March, 
1842; — could lounge into the ' Corner Bookstore,' where 
James T. Fields would show him the new Tennyson, or 
where the Mutual Admiration Society would leave an 
epigram or two behind; or hear Everett or Holmes 
or Parsons or Webster read poem or lecture at the 
'Odeon.' He could discuss with a partner in a dance 
the moral significance of the Fifth Symphony of Bee- 
thoven in comparison with the lessons of the Second 
or the Seventh. Another partner in the next quadrille 
would reconcile for him the conflict of free will and fore- 
knowledge. At Miss Peabody's foreign bookstore he 
could take out for a week Strauss's ' Leben Jesu,' if he 
had not the shekels for its purchase, as probably he had 
not. Or, under the same hospitable roof, he could in the 
evening hear Hawthorne tell the story of Parson Moody's 
veil, or discuss the origin of the Myth of Ceres with 
Margaret Fuller. Or when he danced 'the pastorale' 
at Judge Jackson's, was he renewing the memories of an 
Aryan tradition, or did the figure suggest, more likely, 
the social arrangements of the followers of Hermann ? 
Mr. Emerson lectured for him ; Allston's pictures were 
hung in galleries for him; Mr. Tudor imported ice for 
him ; Fanny Elssler danced for him ; and Braham sang 
for him. The world worked for him — or labored for him. 
And he entered into the labors of all sorts and conditions 
of men. . . . 



BOSTON DAYS 



" The truth was that literature was not yet a profession. 
The men who wrote for the ' North American ' were earn- 
ing their bread and butter, their sheets, blankets, fuel, 
broadcloth, shingles, and slates in other enterprises. 
Emerson was an exception; and perhaps the impression 
as to his being crazy was helped by the observation that 
these ' things which perish in the using ' came to him in 
the uncanny and unusual channel of literary workmanship. 
Even Emerson printed in the ' North American Review ' 
lectures which had been delivered elsewhere. He told me 
in 1874, after he had returned from England, that he had 
then never received a dollar from the sale of any of his 
own published works. He said he owned a great many 
copies of his own books, but that these were all the 
returns which he had received from his publishers." 

In the decade of 1840-50 the Lowell Institute 
courses became an important factor in Boston life. 
Webster, Everett, Choate, Channing, Sumner, Emer- 
son, Holmes, and Winthrop lectured on its platform. In 
1845 Thomas Starr King removed to Boston, where, as 
a friend said, " his rare genius, insight, and marvellous 
power of expression gave him a welcome everywhere." 
It was in 1847 that John Amory Lowell invited the 
noted Agassiz to come over from Switzerland to deliver 
a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute. Har- 
vard University invited the great naturalist to accept a 
chair, which he j&lled with a power that radiated far 
beyond Cambridge and Boston, leaving its impress on 
the world. Most fortunate was Professor Agassiz in 
his marriage to Miss Elizabeth Gary of Milton, a lady 
of beautiful and gracious presence who entered into his 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 19 

scientific life with the enthusiasm of a scholar and gave 
to him ideal companionship of thought as well as of 
affection. Together Professor and Mrs. Agassiz made 
a memorable ti'ip to the Andes, where over a period 
of several months he made important research. Mrs. 
Agassiz assisted him in recording the results of his 
observations. The first meeting of Longfellow and 
Agassiz is noted in a line of the poet's diary under 
the date of Jan. 9, 184/. "In the evening," writes Mr. 
Longfellow, " there was a reunion at Felton's to meet 
Mr. Agassiz, the Swiss geologist and naturalist, a pleas- 
ant, voluble man, with a beaming face." Some months 
later Mr. Longfellow gives another little glimpse of 
Agassiz and the nearer group of friends in this entry 
in his diary : — 

" Agassiz, Felton, and Sumner to dinner. Agassiz is 
very pleasant, affable, simple. We all drove over to 
South Boston to take tea with Mrs. Howe." 

There was leisure for friendship in all those years, 
and when the fiftieth birthday of Agassiz came (May 28, 
1857), it was celebrated by a dinner given him at Par- 
ker's by fourteen of his nearer friends, Mr. Longfellow 
presiding. Dr. Holmes and Lowell both read poems 
written for the occasion and that of Longfellow (en- 
titled "The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz") will be 
found in his poetical works. It was about 1859 that 
the Agassiz Museum at Harvard was founded. A 
foreign visitor in Boston about this time, writing of 
the circle of friends met at Mr. Longfellow's, thus 
refers to the great Swiss naturalist : — 



20 BOSTON DAYS 



" And often, too, comes Agassiz, with his gentle and 
genial spirit, his childlike devotion to science, and — or 
he would not be a true son of his adopted country — his 
eager interest in the politics of the day. . . . Between 
the Poet and the Naturalist there exists a very warm 
friendship, and among other poetical tributes, Mr. Long- 
fellow has achieved the feat — for so it must seem to us, 
with our rigid English tongues — of addressing to his 
friend, in the October number of the 'Atlantic Monthly,' 
a gay and graceful chanson in his native language." 

On the departure of Professor Agassiz for Brazil 

(ill 1865) Dr. Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, and other 

friends gave him a farewell dinner, at which Dr. Holmes 

read a humorous poem whose opening lines run : — 

" How the mountains talk together, 
Looking out upon the weather, 
When they heard our friend had planned his 
Little trip among the Andes ! 
How they '11 bare their snowy scalps 
To the climber of the Alps 
When the cry goes through their passes, 
' Here now comes the great Agassiz I ' " 

In later years, when the Emperor Dom Pedro of 
Brazil visited Boston, he was asked to choose the guests 
at a dinner to be given in his honor, and he named 
Agassiz, Holmes, Emerson, and Lowell. Dr. Hale has 
noted that with the arrival of Agassiz in America there 
was ended the poor habit of studying nature through 
the eyes of other observers. 

Agassiz died in 1873, and in the beautiful commemo- 
rative ode written for him by Lowell the lines occur : 

" His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, 
Doubled the feast without a miracle." 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 21 

Transcendentalism was a spiritual impulse greatly 
stimulated by the German study and reading that took 
such hold on Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, 
Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, Elizabeth 
Peabody and others iu the decade of 1830-40. In the 
latter year " The Dial " was started ; and an autograph 
letter from Emerson to Elizabeth Peabody, without 
date, but necessarily written between 1840 and 1843 
(as " The Dial " only lived three years), is as follows : 

" Can Miss Peabody oblige ' The Dial ' (just ready for 
extreme unction) so far as to send the first of these two 
proofs directly to the printers? On page 480 occurs the 
phrase, ' a dead leveller.' Is the phrase a considered 
one ? I don't like the sound of it very well, but it may 
be right." 

Channing's influence was a potent one, reaching from 
the early years of the century ; Theodore Parker also 
began to be felt as a great power about 1840 ; he was 
almost the Savonarola of his day. Thoreau and 
Bronson Alcott were unique personalities and a law 
unto themselves. "The acorn-eating Alcott," wrote 
Emerson of him to Carlyle, yet no one ever more fully 
appreciated another than did Emerson his Socratic 
neighbor. About 1840 the famous " Brook Farm " 
experiment was inaugurated, and its constitution stated 
its aim at an effort " to promote more effectually the 
great objects of human culture," and "to establish the 
external relations of life on a basis of wisdom and 
purity." 



22 BOSTON DAYS 



In 1841 Hawthorne wrote from Brook Farm to a 
friend : — 

"I have milked a cow. The herd has rebelled against 
the usurpation of Miss Fuller's heifer, and whenever they 
are turned out of the barn she is compelled to take refuge 
with me. She is not an amiable cow, but has an intelligent 
face and a reflective cast of character." 

Lowell, and others of the intellectual cult of that 
period, were extremely simple in outward life. It is 
authentically recorded that Mrs. Hawthorne having 
bought a broom carried it home in her hand walking 
across the Common, and that Julia Ward Howe, escorted 
by Motley, walked home from a ball. Mrs. Edwin P. 
Whipple tells a pretty story of a visit of herself and her 
husband to the Hawthornes in the red house at Lenox, 
when Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Whipple went out in 
the garden and picked currants for tea ; Mrs. Haw- 
thorne made biscuit, and JSIrs. Whipple laid the 
table. But were not currants and biscuit and tea a 
feast for the gods when the Hawthornes and the 
Whipples sat down to this nectar and ambrosia ? 

The poet Longfellow had married the daughter of a 
wealthy house, — Miss Frances Appleton, who brought 
to the young poet the prestige of wealth and caste, 
while his widening horizon gave to her in after years 
the immortality of a poet's love. Mrs. Longfellow was 
a woman of great personal charm, of fine culture, and 
the old '^ Craigie House " became one of the most noted 
of literary homes. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 23 

The life of letters and art, of transcendeutal philo- 
sophy and speculative thought, and of reform had each 
its distinctive currents, yet largely meeting and occa- 
sionally identical each with the other. 

The Boston literati really belong to the nation, 
and the interest of their lives is in no sense local. 
The chronology of literary Boston extends even from 
the day of Anne Bradstreet to that of the present, 
with innumerable shadings and breaks and interrela- 
tions. The antislavery excitement and the civil war 
came in with a force that can hardly be dreamed 
of in reading the literary and social history of those 
times ; it requires the presence and voice of some of 
those who were actors in the drama to convey any 
adequate idea of the way society was divided against 
itself in ardent espousal of wrong as well as right. In 
the light of the present day it seems incredible to assert 
that Wendell Phillips was fairly ostracized by polite 
society in Boston for his espousal of antislavery ; that 
Garrison was dragged by a rope through the streets, — 
where now his statue, lifesize, sits enthroned, — and 
that Lydia Maria Child was denied the entree to the 
Athenseum Library because she had published her book 
entitled " An Appeal for that Class of Americans called 
Africans." Equally absurd does it seem to learn that 
Mrs. Howe took her life in her hands, socially speaking, 
when she first attended a " Woman's Rights " — lately 
woman suffrage — convention. She herself relates the 
incident — which was to have such a controlling effect 
on general progress — with infinite humor. Reports 



24 BOSTON DAYS 



of the absurdity and audacity of the "woman's rights" 
clique pervaded the town and challenged Mrs. Howe's 
keen sense of justice. So she fared forth to investigate 
for herself, although more than predisposed to believe 
in the absurdity. She went, she saw, and she was 
conquered, and convinced as well, by the sweet voice, 
the radiant presence, and the invincible logic of Lucy 
Stone, and she went out to take up her new and 
greater life of conquering larger territory for the reform 
and status of women. Yet before Lucy Stone initiated 
the " movement '' for the larger life of women, Margaret 
Fuller and Elizabeth Peabody were living it, and realiz- 
ing in outward experience the higher outlook of intel- 
lectual freedom. Many varieties of progress contribute 
to social advancement. 

We find Sophia Peabody writing to her sister 
Elizabeth a typical record of the quality of life in those 
days in the following : — 

" I went to my hammock with Xenophon. Socrates 
was divinest, after Jesus Christ, I think. He lived up 
to his thought." 

With such themes as these life concerned itself 
Mr. Frothingham regards the publication of Emer- 
son's "Nature" in 1836 as the entering wedge of the 
transcendental movement. The movement might, in- 
deed, have well been initiated by that wonderful insight 
which the Seer of Concord thus expresses : " We are 
escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents, 
and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us. " Two years 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 25 

later Emerson deepened the impression made by his 
" Nature " by his famous address before the Divinity 
School of Cambridge, — an address that provoked an 
attack from Prof. Andrews Norton (the father of 
Charles Eliot Norton), who saw in it " the latest form 
of inlidelity." In the mean time, Emerson's lectures 
grew more frequent, and his " Spiritual Laws," " Com- 
pensation," " Circles," and " Transcendentalism " were 
delivered before audiences who regarded these dis- 
courses as vital messages. In the latter lecture Emer- 
son said : — 

" The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of 
spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracles, in the per- a 

petual openness of the human mind to new influx of ^ 

light and power ; he believes in inspiration and ecstasy. 
He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered (L^ 

to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applica- 
tions to the state of man, without the admission of any- 
thing unspiritual, that is, anything positive, dogmatic, 
personal." 

When, in " The Over-soul," Emerson told his hearers 
that " The soul looketh steadily forward, creating a 
world before her, leaving worlds behind her," and that 
" the web of events is the flowing robe in which she is 
clothed," these revelations of the true nature of life 
formed the exclusive topic of conversation for many 
days. 

All this faith and fervor and mysticism that were in 
the air demanded a channel of expression beyond that 
of the pulpit and the platform ; and so " The Dial " came 



26 BOSTON DAYS 



into existence, a quarterly magazine that had less than 
four years' tenure of life, issuing only some fifteen 
numbers, and which yet left an indelible impress on 
the progress of thought. The special priest and 
priestess of these Eleusinian mysteries — Emerson and 
Margaret Fuller — were its editors, and their corps of 
fellow-conspirators, as Prof. Andrews Norton regarded 
them, — the apostles of " the latest form of infidelity," 
— included Elizabeth Peabody, James Freeman Clarke, 
George Ripley, William Henry Channing, Theodore 
Parker, Christopher P. Cranch, and others. 

Mr. Cranch was an artist and poet ; a man of singular 
purity and beauty of life and clearness of spiritual 
vision. One poem of his should be held in living 
memory, of which the opening stanza runs : — 

" We are spirits, clad in veils ; 
Man by man was never seen ; 
All our deep communion fails 
To remove the shadowy screen." 

The poems of Emerson were from time to time 
appearing in " The Dial," — largely received with the 
unpenetrating awe with which the average tourist reads 
an Assyrian inscription, — poems with such lines as 
these : — 

" A spell is laid on sod and stone ; 
Night and Day were tampered with, 
Every quality and pith 
Surcharged and sultry with a power 
That works its will on age and hour." 

Or again : — 



J 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 27 

"The living Heaven thy prayers respect, 
House at once and architect, 
Quarrying man's rejected hours, 
Builds therewith eternal towers ; 
Sole and self-commanded works, 
Fears not undermining days. 
Grows by decays, 

And, by the famous might that lurks 
In reaction and recoil, 
Makes flame to freeze, and ice to boU." 

Emerson was oflfering the message that 

" There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that knoweth all ; " 

or he was giving the wise counsel in the " Sursum 

Corda": — 

" Seek not the spirit if it hide 
Inexorable to thy zeal; 
Trembler, do not whine and chide; 
Art thou not also real ? " 

Or he enjoined on his followers : — 

" Eat thou the bread which men refuse, 
Flee from the goods which from thee flee ; 
Seek nothing, — Fortune seeketh thee. 
Nor mount, nor dive ; all good things keep 
The midway of the eternal deep." 

Everywhere he taught the supremacy of the soul ; 
that facts and events were " fluid " to this supreme 
potency. He pictured the flowing events of life, — 
the circumstance and condition as the mere transient 
scenery through which the soul is making her pilgrimage. 
" The soul is ceaselessly joyful," he affirmed, and herein 



28 BOSTON DAYS 



is one of the greatest of insights, which, if truly realized 
and merged into experience, makes the realization an 
absolute epoch in life. 

Emerson, whom Dr. Holmes aptly called " the Buddha 
of the West," continued his lectures ; and of one of these 
lectures we find Lowell humorously saying : — 

" Emerson's oration was more disjointed even than 
usual. It began nowhere and ended everywhere; and 
yet, as always with that divine man, it left you feeling 
that something beautiful had passed that way, something 
more beautiful than anything else, like the rising and set- 
ting of stars. . . . He boggled, he lost his place, he had 
to put on his glasses ; but it was as if a creature from 
some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it 
was our fault and not his. It was chaotic, but it was all 
such stuff as stars are made of, and you could not help 
feeling that if you waited awhile all that was nebulous 
would be hurled into planets, and would assume the 
mathematical gravity of system." 

The social life was ideally full and rich in constant 
intercourse, and a little note from Emerson to Sophia 
Peabody is again indicative of its trend : — 

, . . "Our common friend, Mr. Alcott, the prince of 
conversers, lives little more than a mile from our house, 
and we will call in his aid, as we often do, to make 
amends for our deficiency, when you come. Will you say 
to your sister Elizabeth that I received her kind letter 
relating to certain high matters, which I have not yet 
been in the vein to answer, — indeed, I dreamed that she 
knows all my answer to that question, — has it alreadj^ in 
her rich suggestion, and only waits for mine to see how 
they will tally." 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 29 

Elizabeth Peabody, who is visiting Mr, Emerson, thus 
writes to her sister Sophia : — 

Concord, Mass, June 23, 1839. 
Here I am on the Mount of Transfiguration, but very 
muctf in the condition of the disciples when they were 
prostrate in the dust. ... I went to Allston's on Tues- 
day evening. He was in delightful spirits, but soft as a 
summer evening. ... I carried to him a volume of 
"Twice Told Tales" to exchange for mine. He said be 
thirsted for imaginative writing, and all the family have 
read the book with great delight. I am really provoked 
that I did not bring " The Token " with me, so as to have 
"The Mermaid" and "The Haunted Mind" to read to 
people. I was hardly seated here, after tea yesterdny, 
before Mr. Emerson asked me what I had to say of 
Hawthorne, and told me that Mr. Bancroft said he was 
the most efficient and best of the Custom House ofticers. 
Mr. Emerson seemed all congenial about him, but has 
not yet read his writings. He is in a delightful state of 
mind ; not yet rested from last winter's undue labors, 
but keenly industrious. He has uttered no heresies about 
Mr. Allston, but only beautiful things, — dwelling, how- 
ever, on his highest merits least. He says Jones Very 
forbids all correcting of his verses ; but nevertheless he 
[Emerson] selects and combines with sovereign will, " and 
shall," he says, " make out quite a little gem of a volume." 
" But," says he, " Hawthorne says Very is always vain. 
I find I cannot forget that dictum which you repeated ; 
but it is continually confirmed by himself, amidst all his 
sublimities." And then he repeated some of Very's 
speeches and told how he dealt with him. Mr. Emerson 
is very luminous, and wiser than ever. Oh, he is beauti- 
ful, and good, and great ! 



30 BOSTON DAYS 



We find Hawthorne writing to Sophia Peabody, his 

fiancde : — 

6 o'clock, P.M. 

" What a wonderful vision that is, — the dream angel. 
I do esteem it almost a miracle that your pencil should 
unconsciously have produced it ; it is as much an appari- 
tion of an ethereal being as if the heavenly face and form 
had been shadowed forth in the air, instead of upon 
paper. It seems to me that it is our guardian angel, who 
kneels at the footstool of God, and is pointing to us upon 
earth, and asking earthly and heavenly blessings for us, — 
entreating that we may not much longer be divided, that 
we may sit by our own fireside." 

' ' Thought is the wages 
For which I sell days." 

The period known as Transcendentalism in New 
England has been alike the subject of mystery, ridicule, 
admiration, and serious study. Perhaps it has never 
been more perfectly defined than by Mrs. Caroline H. 
Dall, who says that it is an arc, one end of which was 
held by Anne Hutchinson and the other by Margaret 
Fuller. 

The arc might, however, be still more widely extended 
in its true spiritual inclusiveness if one contemplates it 
in the light of that deeper realization expressed by the 
poet, that, — 

"... Through the ages, one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the progress of the 
suns." 

Life is but another name for spiritual evolu- 
tion. Every process and achievement arc but steps 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 31 

in the vast and sublime work of the liberation of the 
spirit. 

The special period in Boston, however, designated by 
Transcendentalism lies easily between the two decades of 
1830-50, during which time Margaret Fuller held her 
" Conversation Classes," Mr. Ripley and his associates 
luxuriated at Brook Farm, and Mr. Alcott amazed the 
educational world by the original methods in his school 
whose curious processes were recorded by Elizabeth 
Peabody. 

Dr. Bartol was eleven years the junior of George 
Ripley, but he was associated with him as one of the 
original members of the Transcendental Club, whose 
initial meeting was held (in September of 1836) in 
Mr. Ripley's house. There were present Emerson, 
Alcott, Dr. Channing, Dr. Hedge, James Freeman 
Clarke, Orestes A. Brownson, and Convers Francis, a 
brother of Lydia Maria Child. A year later Margaret 
Fuller, Theodore Parker, and Elizabeth Peabody were 
added to the numbers. Theology, revelation, and in- 
spiration were the chief themes that fascinated their 
meditations. " The conversation turned on a few central 
ideas," said one of the habitues, — " Law, Truth, Indi- 
viduality, and the Personality of God." The problems 
of civilization engaged the attention of Mr. Ripley and 
Dr. Channing very closely, and elicited " great power of 
thought and richness and eloquence " in their discus- 
sion, — an eloquence which Theodore Parker declared 
" would equal any of the beautiful dialogues of Plato." 

George Ripley — born in Greenfield, Mass., in 1802 — 



32 BOSTON DAYS 



was one of the remarkable men of the preceding century. 
Graduating from Harvard at the age of twenty-one, he 
soon became the pastor of an Unitarian society in 
Boston. At this time Dr. Channing was preaching in 
Federal Street, F. W. P. Greenwood at King's Chapel, 
Francis Parkman tlie elder, in Hanover Street, John 
Pierrepont in HoUis Street, and Charles Lowell, the 
father of the poet, was the pastor of the old West 
Church in Lynde Street. 

It was as the original founder of the community 
known as Brook Farm that Mr. Ripley has been chiefly 
remembered, although this episode in his career is not 
entitled to pre-eminence over his work as a literary 
man and a preacher. Social reform was in the air in 
1840 as prominently as is now the labor question, — 
each movement having for its basis a desire for the 
improvement of humanity. 

In the air, too, was one magic name, — a name to con- 
jure with, for Margaret Fuller was not so much merely 
or even mostly the literary woman, as she was a great 
force in life. It has been asserted that she was not 
only the greatest woman of letters in America, but the 
only one who ever produced work of any consequence. 
This extravagant statement has led not unnaturally to 
contradiction equally extravagant by those who seem to 
possess no true recognition of her real greatness. A 
close student of profound, original power, of a wide and 
exquisite culture, a fully trained and philosophic mind, 
and a gift that can perhaps best be described as divina- 
tion, — in these Margaret Fuller was supreme. In her 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 33 

writings there is the quality of greatness, there is a 
depth of spiritual insight, there is a high order of 
thought, for which, indeed, too high appreciation can 
hardly be claimed. Yet on the other hand she lacked 
form, lacked artistic expression, the records she has left 
are meagre in quantity, and indeed the true view of 
Margaret Fuller is perhaps that she was one of the 
greatest and the most exalted spirits ever sent into this 
world, whose brief life here, in a constant conflict with 
conditions, did not give her time or opportunity for the 
development of her essential self. All her aims and 
hopes transcended the sphere of ordinary life. Her 
literary work, too, is the work of a woman whose life 
up to the age of thirty was almost entirely occupied in 
teaching and who died at forty. Her greatest literary 
achievement, " History of Italy," was lost in the ship- 
wreck which swallowed up her life and that of her 
husband and child. 

Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge on May 23, 
1810, and died in the shipwreck off" Fire Island, New 
York, July 19, 1850. She was a precocious child, 
reading Latin at six, and familiar from her nursery days 
with the great literature of the world. Her life as a 
teacher was full of arduous care. She sui)ported her 
invalid mother, sent two of her brothers through college, 
and domestic life and cares weighed heavily on her, 
yet all this time her student life surpassed an acquire- 
ment of that of almost any modern girl at college with 
no care or claim upon her save that of study alone. 

She was thirty-five years of age when she went 
8 



34 BOSTON DAYS 



abroad. A year later she became the wife of the 
Marquis d'Ossoli. In 1847 her son Angelo Eugene was 
born, and three years later her life on earth, with all its 
historic and tragic story, was over. Thus it will be seen 
how little of that literary leisure, that calm margin of 
creative thought, fell to her lot. The only wonder is 
that she left any literary work at all, and, as she her- 
self said, the pen in her hand was a non-conductor. 
Margaret Fuller was indeed a muse, a sibyl, an impro- 
visatrice, rather than a literary woman in the restricted 
sense of producing literature. She was a great force, 
an elemental power in life. She was the diviner of 
mental states and the inspirer of nobler aims. " All the 
good I have ever done," she once said, " has been by 
calling on every nature for its highest." In this, the 
calling on every nature for its highest, lay the secret, 
too, of the potent influence of Phillips Brooks. That 
was his gift. He recognized the ideal in every man, and 
to that he appealed. 

James Freeman Clarke has said of Margaret ; — 

" She was indeed the friend. This was her vocation. 
She bore at her girdle a golden key to unlock all caskets 
of confidence. Into whatever home she entered she 
brought a benediction of truth, justice, tolerance, and 
honor, and to every one who sought her to confer or seek 
counsel she spoke the needed word of benignant wisdom." 

Her published works are comprised in five volumes : 
" Summer on the Lakes," " Woman in the Nineteenth 
Century," a volume of literary reviews entitled " Art, 
Literature, and the Drama," and two volumes of miscel- 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 35 

laneous papers, " Life Without and Within," and " At 
Home and Abroad." But it is indeed more than a 
question as to whether she can be truly recognized as a 
writer alone until the reader comes into a certain sym- 
pathetic comprehension of her very remarkable per- 
sonality, which was truly an embodiment of the rarest 
genius. In the stimulating atmosphere of Cambridge, 
Margaret Fuller grew into womanhood. Her father, 
himself a university man, encouraged her precocious 
intellect. She was taught the Latin and English gram- 
mar at the same time, and reading Latin at six was 
absorbed in Shakspeare at the age of eight, and about 
the same time Cervantes, Coleridge, and Moli^re fasci- 
nated her. Before she was twenty she was giving daily 
lessons in three languages, steeping herself in German 
philosophy, in ethics, in history. The comparatively 
small amount of literary work that she has left makes 
this form of expression a merely incidental one in her life. 
In one quality it is possible that absolute literary pre- 
eminence may be affirmed of her, that of profundity. 
She drew from the deepest wells of thought, and this 
stamped her work with an impressiveness that contrasts 
vividly with that which is the mere product of native 
facility conjoined with literary tastes and scholarly 
acquirement. She had the power by some subtle 
alchemy to transmute any truth into a thought crystal 
worthy to be held as a law. Her ideals, her tempera- 
ment, and her circumstances kept up a continued con- 
flict among themselves. Good health, too, which is a 
very rational factor in life, was unknown to her ; but 



36 BOSTON DAYS 



lier sincerity, her magnanimity, her truth, her exaltation 
of spirit, Iier true humility, — in short, her nobility of 
soul never faltered. Her life was greater than her 
work. 

Mrs. Browning, meeting her in Florence, said in a 
letter to Miss Mitford, — 

"A very interesting person is Madame d'Ossoli, far 
better than her writings, — thoughtful, spiritual in her 
habitual mood of mind ; not only exalted but exaltee in 
her opinions, and yet calm in manner." 

Again, Mrs. Browning said of Madame d'Ossoli after 
her death : — 

" She was a most interesting woman to me, though I did 
not sympathize with a large portion of her opinions. Her 
written works are just naught. She said herself they were 
sketches thrown out in haste, and that the sole produc- 
tion of hers which was likely to represent her at all would 
be the ' History of the Italian Revolution.' In fact, her 
reputation such as it was in America seemed to stand 
mainly on her conversation and oral lectures. If I 
wished any one to do her justice I should say, as I have 
indeed said, ' never read what she has written.' The 
letters, however, are individual and full, I should fancy, 
of that magnetic personal influence which was so strong 
with her. I felt drawn in toward her during our short 
intercourse ; I loved her, and the circumstances of her 
death shock me to the very roots of my heart." 

Madame d'Ossoli passed her last evening in Italy with 
the Brownings before sailing on that voyage whose end 
lay in the unseen realm. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 37 

The friendships of Margaret Fuller were the most 
potent experiences in her life and these were very largely 
the channels of her spiritual activity. James Freeman 
Clarke says of her genius for friendship : — 

" The insight which Margaret displayed in finding her 
friends, the magnetism by which she drew them toward 
herself, the catholic range of her intimacies, the influence 
which she exercised to develop the latent germ in every 
character, the constancy with which she clung to each 
when she had once given and received confidence, the 
delicate justice which kept every intimacy separate, and 
the process of transfiguration which took place when she 
met any one on this mountain of Friendship, giving a 
dazzling lustre to the details of common life, — all these 
should be at least touched upon and iUustrated to give 
any adequate view of her in these relations. 

..." She saw when any one belonged to her and never 
rested until she came into possession of her property. . . . 
Margaret's constancy to any genuine relation once estab- 
lished was surprising. If her friends' aim changed so as 
to take them out of her sphere, she was saddened by it and 
did not let them go without a struggle, but whenever they 
continued ' true to the original standard,' as she phrased 
it, her affectionate interest would follow them unimpaired 
through all the changes of life. * Great and even fatal 
errors (so far as this life is concerned) could not destroy 
my friendship for one in whom I am sure of the kernel of 
nobleness.' She never formed a friendship until she had 
seen and known this germ of good, and afterward judged 
conduct by it. To this germ of good, the highest law of 
each individual, she held them true. But never did she 
act like those who so often judge of a friend from some 
report of his conduct as if they had never known him, 



38 BOSTON DAYS 



and allow the inference from the single act to alter the 
opinion formed by an induction from years of intercourse. 
From all such weakness Margaret stood wholly free. . . . 
She was the centre of a group very different from each 
other, and whose only affinity consisted in their all being 
polarized by the strong attraction of her mind. . . . 
How she glorified life to all ! How she displayed always 
the same marvellous gift of conversation which afterwards 
dazzled all who knew her ! Those who know Margaret 
only by her published writings know her least ; her notes 
and letters contain more of her mind, but it was only in 
conversation that she was perfectly free and at home. . . . 
All her friends will unite in the testimony that whatever 
they may have known of wit and eloquence in others they 
have never seen one who, like her, by the conversation of 
an hour or two could not merely entertain and inform but 
make an epoch in one's life. We all dated back to this 
or that conversation with Margaret, in which we took a 
complete survey of great subjects, came to some clear 
view of a difficult question, saw our way open before us 
to a higher plane of life, and were led to some definite 
resolution or purpose which has had a bearing on all our 
subsequent career. For Margaret's conversation turned 
at such times to life, — its destiny, its duty, its prospect. 
With comprehensive glance she would survey the past and 
sum up in a few brief words its results ; she would then 
turn to the future and by a natural order sweep through 
its chances and alternatives, — passing ever into a more 
earnest tone, into a more serious view, — and then bring 
all to bear on the present till its duties grew plain and its 
opportunities attractive. . . . Events in life apparently 
trivial often seemed to her full of mystic significance." 

Margaret Fuller was in her twenty-fifth year when 
she first met and knew Emerson. A year or so earlier 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 39 

Dr. Hedge had told him of her genius and scholarship 
and had loaned him her manuscript translation of 
Goethe's " Tasso." Emerson notes that he also became 
the more interested in her through the warm praises of 
Harriet Martineau, who passed the winter of 1835-36 
in Boston and was for some time his guest. The 
strong courage and earnest sincerity of Miss Marti- 
neau made a deep impression on Margaret Fuller, who 
afterwards said of their first meeting, — 

'' I wished to give myself wholly up to receive an 
impression of Miss Martineau. I shall never forget 
what she said. It has bound me to her. In that hour, 
most unexpectedly to me, we passed the barrier tliat 
separates acquaintance from friendship, and I saw how 
greatly her heart was to be valued." 

At the time of her first meeting with Emerson he 
described himself as " an eager scholar of ethics and 
one who had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism," 
and he adds that " I found something profane in the 
hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me, and 
when I returned to my library had much to think of 
the crackling of thorns under a pot. Margaret, who 
had stuifed me out as a philosopher in her own fancy, 
was too intent on establishing a good footing between 
us to omit any art of winning. She studied my tastes, 
challenged frankness by frankness, and was curious to 
know my opinions and experiences." Emerson records 
that he had heard, and perhaps he partly shared, the 
rumor that Margaret was critical and disdainful of all 
but the intellectual, " but," he adds, '' it was a super- 



40 BOSTON DAYS 



ficial judgment." " When she came to Concord," 
he continues, " she was ah^eady rich in friends, rich 
in experiences, rich in culture. She was well read 
in French, Italian, and German literature. She had 
learned Latin and a little Greek, but her English read- 
ing was incomplete ; and while she knew Moli^re and 
Rousseau and any quantity of French letters, memoirs, 
and novels, and was a dear student of Dante and 
Petrarch, and knew German books more cordially than 
any other person, she was little read in Shakspeare, 
and I believe I had the pleasure of making her ac- 
quainted with Chaucer, with Ben Jonson, with Her- 
bert, Chapman, Ford, Beaumont and Fletcher, with 
Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne. I was seven years 
her senior, and had the habit of idle reading in old 
English books, and though not much versed, yet quite 
enough to give me the right to lead her. She fancied 
that sympathy and taste had led her to an exclusive 
culture of southern European books." 

One of the mystic personalities who have left an 
impress on this time was Jones Very, a man spiritually 
akin to Fenelon and Madame Guyon. He appears as a 
curious figure against the background of religious tradi- 
tion. A graduate of Harvard and a tutor there for two 
years, he is a figure in the history of the college ; as a 
poet he was a Transcendentalist for Transcendentalists ; 
and his own unique personality was one remarked even 
in his own unconventional days. He was a man of 
absolute sincerity of life. His own attitude is typified 
in the lines from his sonnet entitled " Jacob's Well" : 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 41 

" Thou pray'st not, save when in thy soul thou pray'st. 
Disrobing of thyself to feed the poor ; 
The words thy lips shall utter then, thou say'st, 
They are as marble, and they shall endure. 
Pray always, for on prayer the hungry feed ; 
Its sound is hidden music to the soul ; 
From low desires its rising strains shall lead, 
And willing captives own thy just control." 

Mr. Very believed in the absolute surrender to the 
Divine Will, and this faith he realized in outward life. 
He crystallized this faith in the lines, — 

" The Prophet speaks ; the world attentive stands ! 
The voice that stirs the people's countless host 
Issues again the Living God's commands." 

Jones Very was born iu Salem in August of 1813, 
the eldest of six children. The family all had the gift 
of versification. In his youth he was an ardent student 
and expressed a desire to go " to the depths of litera- 
ture." He graduated from Harvard in 1836 with the 
second honors of his class, and was immediately ai> 
pointed a tutor in Greek, carrying on his study of 
theology at the same time in the Divinity School. 
Exceedingly sensitive and reserved in character, enig- 
matic to many, his rare tenderness and sincerity shone 
through the reticence and reserve of his nature. Writ- 
ing verse was a part of the daily expression of his life. 
Like Milton, he regarded it not so much as his own 
gift, but as proceeding from " a power above him." 
Like all the group of which he was a prominent and 
beautiful figure, he was intensely religious ; to a degree, 
indeed, that made the general public pronounce him a 



42 BOSTON DAYS 



monomaniac, but the keen insight of Mr. Emerson dis- 
cerned his true poise, and he said of Mr. Very that he 
was " profoundly sane " and added that he " wished the 
whole world were as mad as he." It was Elizabeth 
Peabody, however, who was his chief discoverer. She 
was the Rontgen ray that flashed its light through all 
manner of barriers, and her chief mission seems to have 
been always the revelation of persons to themselves. 
With her wonderful power of establishing rapport, she 
became very intimate with Jones Very. Her sister 
Sophia (afterwards Mrs. Hawtliorne) also came to know 
him well, and in one of her letters to Elizabeth she thus 
speaks of Mr. Very : — 

"I do not think I am subject to my imagination; I 
can let an idea go to the grave that I see is false. When 
I am altogether true to the light I have, I should be in 
the heaven where the angelic Very now is. . . . Jones 
Very came to tea this afternoon. He was troubled at 
first, but we comforted him with sympathy. His conver- 
sation was divine, and such level rays of celestial light as 
beamed from his face, every time he looked up, were 
lovely to behold. We told him of our enjoyment of his 
sonnets. He smiled and said that, unless we thought 
them beautiful because we also heard the Voice in reading 
them, they would be of no avail. ' Since I have shown 
you my sonnets,' said he to me, ' I think you should show 
me your paintings.' Mary brought my drawing book and 
Aeschylos. He deeply enjoyed them." 

Elizabeth Peabody was deeply interested in Mr. 
Very's poems, which she says were produced very 
rapidly, pencilled down "just as they came to him," 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 43 

often produced at the rate of two or three a day. 
These Mr. Very copied on a large sheet of paper, folded 
in pages, and when the daily supply of poetry was 
complete he brought it to her and she transmitted it 
to her familiar spirit, Mr. Emerson. In those days, we 
must remember, the chief occupation, the prevailing 
industry, it might be said, of these transcendental folk 
was to write and discuss each other's poems. Their 
inspirations were their special capital in life. In his 
journal Mr. Emerson alludes to Very and says : — 

" Our Saint was very unwilling to allow correction of 
his verses, but I, his friend, said, ' I supposed you were 
too high in your thought to mind such trifles.' Mr. Very 
replied, ' I value these verses not because they are mine, 
but because they are not.' Very interesting are the jour- 
nal records of Mr. Emerson regarding Jones Very. In 
one place we find him saying : ' Jones Very came here two 
days ago. His position accuses society as much as 
society names that position false and morbid, and much of 
his discourse concerning society, church, and college was 
absolutely just. He has nothing to do with time because 
he obeys. A man who is busy has no time. He does 
not recognize that element. A man who is idle saj^s he 
does not know what to do with his time. Obedience is in 
eternity. Mr. Very sa^^s that he feels it an honor to wash 
his face, being as it is the temple of the spirit. He also 
says that it is with him a day of hate that he discerns the 
bad element in every person whom he meets which repels 
him ; he even shrinks a little to give the hand, that sign 
to receive. His only guard in going to see men is that he 
goes to do them good, else they would injure him 
spiritually." 



44 BOSTON DAYS 



Emerson's characteristic humor appears in the follow- 
ing extract from his journal, in which his amusement at 
Verj's eccentricities is revealed side by side with his 
appreciation of the poet's high character : — 

" I ought not to omit to record the astonishment which 
seized all the company when our brave Saint the other 
day fronted the presiding Preacher. The Preacher began 
to tower and dogmatize with many words. Then I fore- 
saw that his doom was fixed ; and, as soon as he had 
ceased speaking, the Saint set him right, and blew away 
all his words in an instant, — unhorsed him, I may say, and 
tumbled him along the ground in utter dismay, like my 
angel of Heliodorus ; never was discomfiture more com- 
plete. In tones of genuine pathos, he bid him wonder at 
the Love wliich suffered him to speak there iu his chair of 
things he knew nothing of ; one might expect to see the 
book taken from his hands and him thrust out of the 
room, and yet he was allowed to sit and talk, whilst every 
word he spoke was a step of departure from the truth ; 
and of this he commanded himself to bear witness." 

Mr. Emerson often writes to Miss Peabody of the 
enjoyment he has in conversations with Mr. Very, and 
to the latter he wrote : " Do not, I beg of you, let a 
whisper or a sigh of the muse go unattended to or un- 
recorded." Again, we find Mr. Emerson writing to 
Miss Peabody : — 

"I cannot persuade Mr. Very to remain with me 
another day. He says he is not permitted, and no assur- 
ances that his retirement shall be secured are of any avail. 
He has been serene, intelligent, and true in all the con- 
versation I have had with him. He gives me pleasure 
and much relief, after all I had heard concerning him." 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 45 

Mr. Very's own mind is vividly revealed in this para- 
graph of a letter written to Mr. Emerson in 1838, in 
which he says : — 

"I am glad at last to be able to transmit what has been 
told me of Shakespeare — 't is but the faint echo of that 
which speaks to you now. . . . You hear not mine own 
words, but the teachings of the Holy Ghost. . . . My 
friend, I tell you these things as they are told me, and 
hope soon for a day or two of leisure, when I may speak 
to you face to face as I now write." 

Later we find Jones Very ordained as a minister and 
one who brought wonderful power of unseen and un- 
analyzed influence to bear on life. " To have walked 
with Very," says another clergyman, " was truly to have 
walked with God." And another appreciative clerical 
brother said, " I told my people that to see Very for 
half an hour in my pulpit was a far greater sermon than 
any ever preached to them from the lips of an orator." 
Perhaps the secret of the strong impression he made (" 
was his absolute realization of the Divine Presence as *" 
the great fact of life. He could not understand this 
fact as being vague or unreal to any one. One who 
knew him says that " in the height of his ecstasy he 
would sit for hours rapt in thought and gazing off 
into the infinite. Like the saintly Buddha he seemed 
long since to have slain ' love of self, false faith, and 
doubt,' a conqueror of the love of life on earth he had 
become. He regarded the whole duty of life as that of 
uttering the words given to him." 



46 BOSTON DAYS 



It was in 1839 that the house of Little, Brown, and 
Co. — that old landmark among Boston publishing 
houses — published a small collection of Mr, Verj's 
work, — fifty sonnets, three prose essays, and a few lyrics, 
and this was done, if one mistake not, by the request of 
Mr. Emerson. The life of Mr. Very was largely that of 
a recluse, although not by intentional choice. He had 
the isolation of his temperament. Not with any ego- 
tism, but with intense humility, he regarded himself as 
a prophet of God whose service was to be the channel 
of the divine messages to him. This thought is em- 
bodied in the following sonnet : — 

" I looked to find a man who walked with God, 

Like the translated patriarch of old : 
Though gladdened millions on his footstool trod, 

Yet none hke him did such sweet converse hold. 
I heard the wind in low complaint go by 

That none its melodies like him could hear ; j 

Day unto day spoke wisdom from on high, ^ 

Yet none like David turned a willing ear ; 
God walked alone unhonored through the earth ; 

For him no heart-built temple open stood, 
The soul, forgetful of her nobler birth, 

Had hewn him lofty shrines of stone and wood, 
And left unfinished and in ruins still 

The only temple he delights to fill." 

Dr. Hale, who knew Mr. Very, has recently said of 
him: — 

" I have been wishing that some one would prepare a 
notice of a man whose work is of the very first impor- 
tance, while his name seems to have been written in 
water. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 47 

" I lived from September, 1837, to Jaly, 1839, in 
Massachusetts. So did Samuel Longfellow. Very's 
room was in the same entry, and he was regarded as the 
proctor of that entry. He was evidently desirous to be 
on good terms with the boys in the entry, and always 
saluted us cordially and invited us into his room. I was 
but a boy, but Sam Longfellow and I had sense enough to 
see the genius and insight of the man. We had a very 
great respect for him, though we knew he was odd, and 
was called a crank. But a sort of diffidence prevented 
him from taking in the least towards us the tone of an 
instructor or a leader. As I was studying some of his 
sonnets within a fortnight past, I could not but ask my- 
self what might have happened to the world if this man, 
with his profound insight, had had the audacity or self- 
assertion of George Fox or of John Wesley. 

" We certainly knew that he was outside the line of 
common men ; we certainly thought that something was to 
come from that life. But I should say now that only the 
angels of God can say what infinite results are proceeding 
from his life in the minds of thoughtful men and women 
to-day." 

Mr. Very lived until the May of 1880, and of all that 
has been written of him nothing more delicately inter- 
prets his life than the words of Emerson when he said : 

" His words were loaded with fact. What he said, he 
held was not personal to him, was no more disputable 
than the shining of yonder sun or the blowing of this 
south wind. Jones Very is gone into the multitude as 
solitary as Jesus. In dismissing him, I seem to have dis- 
charged an arrow into the heart of society. Wherever 
that young enthusiast goes, he will astonish and discon- 



48 BOSTON DAYS 



cert meu by dividing for them the cloud that covers the 
gulf in mau." 

The " Church of the Disciples " — that most ideally 
beautiful of religious organizations — was inaugurated 
in the house of Dr. Nathaniel Peabody in West Street 
in April of 1841, when a few persons subscribed their 
names to the declaration of faith as written by James 
Freeman Clarke : — 

" We unite together in the following faith and purpose ; 
our faith is in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. And 
we do hereby form ourselves into a Church of the Dis- 
ciples that we may co-operate together in the study and 
practice of Christianity." 

The first names following the signature of the founder 
and pastor were those of Dr. and Mrs. Peabody and 
their three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia. 
Somewhat later came into this communion Dr. Henry 
B. Blackwell and his wife Lucy Stone, Mrs. Julia 
Ward Howe, Mrs. Hemenway, Mrs. Cheney, and many 
otliers whose names have flown to world-wide fame. 

From this initiation of the Church of the Disciples 
whose future lield a power undreamed of by its founder, 
we may for a moment turn backward and study the 
life and personality of James Freeman Clarke, whose 
work expanded in many directions. 

He was the author of several books, of which the 
most important is his " Ten Great Religions," which is 
held by students and thinkers as one of the most 
valuable works of authority, so extended is its re- 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 49 

search into sacred history, so just and fair is it in tone. 
"The Christian Doctrine of Prayer," " Thomas Didymus," 
" Common Sense in Religion," " Steps of Belief," 
" Events and Epochs in Religious History," and " Self- 
Culture " are among his works. Dr. Clarke also wrote 
many poems of a contemplative and meditative charac- 
ter, and he wrote the introduction to a book on spirit- 
ualism, or at least a personal experience of a lady who 
was a seer of spirits and able to converse with them, 
and who did not realize during her early childhood 
that there was anything phenomenal in the appearance 
of the beautiful beings with whom slie held conversa- 
tions. This book is called " Light on the Path," and in 
his preface Dr. Clarke expressed his entire confidence in 
the lady, and, practically, his acceptance of what may 
be termed spiritual spiritualism, — an acceptance which 
becomes almost an inevitable sequence, one would suj)- 
pose, of the perfect faith in immortality and in revealed 
religion. 

No brief outline of the life of Dr. Clarke can adequately 
suggest that gentle persistence of energy which charac- 
terized him, save as it clothed with the personal memo- 
ries of his nearer circle of friends and the literary 
knowledge of that yet more extended circle of readers 
and thinkers on both hemispheres, to whom the name 
of James Freeman Clarke has been identified with some 
valuable religious works, and others, perhaps hardly less 
valuable, of the contemplative type. One of the earliest 
Transcendentalists, he was one of the purest teachers 
of that school of thought which has been exemplified in 

4 



50 BOSTON DAYS 



liis life and work. He was free from tlie vagaries of Mr. 
Alcott, he was less magnetized by German metaphysics 
than Dr. Hedge, and he was of a less exclusively sub- 
jective temperament than Dr. Bartol. He offers the 
exceptional study of the purely contemplative life of the 
scholar who yet resisted the tendency to the closet and 
the cloister to which this temperament is always liable, 
and gave to public activities his best whenever duty 
called him. Not combining the saint and the seer, as 
did Emerson, he was not less the saint, and his life 
reveals to us how potent and how wide may be an 
influence that is as gentle, as quiet — at times as imper- 
ceptible — as that of the Holy Spirit in its working 
upon the hearts of men. His nature was the absolutely 
spiritual ; his kindness was given to the just and the 
unjust, and his character illustrated the gospel of love 
which he taught. 

" Oh, beauty of holiness, 
Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! " 

The Transcendentalism of New England has been a 
powerful force in American life. It is the leaven 
which has leavened national thought ; its influence has 
been universal, and in no sense geographical ; wherever 
books are read — and the readers and worshippers of 
Emerson are so numerous throughout all the great West 
that they give perceptible tone to intellectual life — 
wherever books can go, the transcendental spirit of New 
England has taken root in tliose temperamentally fitted 
to come into this spiritual attitude, and thus its force 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 51 

has become a great and underlying power in our 
national life. By entering into the transcendental spirit 
a man was made " a citizen of the world of souls ; " he 
accepted a higher allegiance, and entered into the uni- 
versal life. Transcendentalism was really the purest 
form of idealism ; the insistence, or " the power of the 
thought and of will, or inspiration, or miracle, or indi- 
vidual culture," as against and as greater than " facts, 
history, the force of circumstances, and the animal 
wants of man." 

" James Freeman Clarke was a contemporary and 
an intimate friend of Theodore Parker," writes Mr. 
Frotliingham ; " he was a co-worker with Channing, a 
close friend and correspondent of Miss Fuller, a sympa- 
thizer with Alcott in his attempts to spiritualize educa- 
tion, a frequent contributor to ' The Dial,' the intellectual 
fellow of the brilliant minds that made the epoch what 
it was. But his interest was not confined to the 
school, nor did the technicalities of or details of the 
transcendental movement embarrass him ; his catholic 
mind took in opinions of all shades, and men of all 
communions. . . . But though churchly tastes led him 
away from the company of themselves where he in- 
tellectually belonged, and an unfailing common sense 
saved him from the extravagances into which some of 
them fell, a Transcendentalist he was, and an uncom- 
promising one. The intuitive philosophy was his 
guide. It gave him assurance of spiritual truths ; it 
interpreted for him the gospels and Jesus ; it inspired 
his endeavors to reconcile belief, to promote unity 



52 BOSTON DAYS 



among the discordant sects, to enlighten and redeem 
mankind. His mission has been that of a spiritual 
peacemaker. But while doing this he has worked 
faithfully at particular causes ; was an avowed and 
earnest abolitionist in the antislavery days. An enemy 
of violent and vindictive legislation, a hearty friend of 
laborers in the field of woman's election to the full 
privileges of culture and citizenship ; a man in whom 
faith, hope, and charity abounded ; a man of intellect- 
ual convictions which made a groundwork for his life." 

The liberal and sympathetic mind of Dr. Clarke asso- 
ciated him sympathetically both with the adherents to 
the more liberal forms of evangelical truth aud with the 
avowed liberals and radicals. This, indeed, is the true 
transcendental spirit to be able to see justly all forms 
of faith. Dr. Clarke's work exemplified impressively 
the spiritual charity which characterizes his " Ten 
Great Religions." 

It was rather a matter of coincidence than of cause 
and effect tliat the enthusiasm for German literature 
and thought glowed so brightly among a little group at 
the time that the transcendental movement increased in 
strength. Dr. Hedge says that this had no very direct 
connection with the philosophy of Kant and his succes- 
sors, although the ideas of the German pliilosophcr were 
eagerly sought and appreciated by a small group of young 
and ardent persons and this trend of thought became an 
outlet for superabundant spiritual activities. In this 
social circle there were a few who were especially bound 
to each other in the ties of noble and permanent friend- 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 53 

ship, — Emerson, Miss Peabody, James Freeman Clarke, 
and Margaret Fuller. Dr. Hedge, as a youth of twenty, 
went abroad taking with him a letter of introduc- 
tion to Goethe, who received him most cordially. 
In 1830, when Dr. Clarke was editing a theological and 
literary magazine in Louisville, Ky., the correspond- 
ence between himself and Margaret Fuller began. Of 
this period Dr. Clarke wrote, in the memoirs of Miss 
Fuller, in which he collaborated with the Rev. William 
Henry Channing and Emerson — in his portion of these 
memoirs he wrote of Margaret : — 

"From 1829 till 1833 I saw or beard from her almost 
every day. There was a family connection, and we called 
each other cousin. She needed a friend. She accepted 
me for this friend, and to me it was a gift of the gods, an 
influence like no other." 

Mr. Clarke refers to this friendship as one that en- 
larged his heart and gave elevation and energy to his 
aims and purpose, — generous words of appreciation 
they are, for if JNIargaret gave him energy he surely gave 
her steadfastness and gentleness, and a faithful friend 
on whom her more mercurial nature could rely. 

While Dr. Holmes had no especial sympathy with the 
transcendental movement, there yet existed between 
James Freeman Clarke and himself a tender and beau- 
tiful friendship, which found expression in one of the 
most perfect lyrics of the genial Autocrat, who wrote 
for a birthday tribute to his classmate a poem containing 
these stanzas : — 



54 BOSTON DAYS 



" I bring the simplest pledge of love. 
Friend of my earlier days : 
Mine is the hand without the glove, 
The heartbeat, not the phrase. 

** How few still breathe this mortal air 
We call by schoolboy names ! 
You still, whatever robe you wear, 
To me are always James. 

" That name the kind apostle bore 
Who shames the sullen creeds, 
Not trusting less, but loving more, 
And showing Faith by deeds." 

And the last stanza runs : — 

" Count not his years while earth has need 
Of souls that heaven inflames 
With sacred zeal to save, to lead, — 
Long live our dear Saint James ! " 

Dr. Holmes often alluded to his old classmate as 
"Saint" James, and to a friend who spoke of this to him 
one day he smiled and said that at no period of Dr. 
Clarke's life would the title have been inappropriate, as 
he seemed always the embodied spirit of gentleness and 
peace, - — of love abounding and overflowing. 

Among the habitues of the home of Dr. and Mrs, 
Clarke were the Channings, Emerson, Longfellow and his 
brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, Mr. and Mrs. Whipple, 
Dr. Holmes, Rev. Dr. Andrew Preston Peabody, Dr. 
Hedge, JSIargaret Fuller, Cliristopher Cranch, Lydia 
Maria Child, Dr. and Mrs. Howe, Miss Peabody, 
Whittier, the Hawthornes, Lowell, Agassiz, and many 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 55 

more of the good and the great, all of whom were 
familiar friends in their household. 

Between James Freeman Clarke and Margaret Fuller 
there always existed a confidential friendship. Writing 
to him under date of July 31, 1862, she says : — 

" I have no reserves, except intellectual reserves ; for to 
speak of things to those who cannot receive them is 
stupidity rather than frankness. Therefore, dear James, 
give heed to this subject. You have received a key to 
what was before unknown of your friend; you have made 
use of it ; now let it be buried with the past, over whose 
passages, profound and sad, yet touched with heaven-born 
beauty, let silence stand sentinel." 

And again she writes to ]Mr. Clarke : — 

" I have been happy in the sight of your pure design, of 
the sweetness and serenity of your mind. . . . Youth is 
past, with its passionate joys and griefs, its restlessness, 
its vague desires. Now, beware the mediocrity that 
threatens middle life, — its limitations of thought and in- 
terest, its dnlness of fancy, its too external life. ... So 
take care of yourself, and let not the intellect more than 
the spirit be quenched." 

Transcendentalism had its inflorescence in many ways, 
serving as a leaven that entered into the social, literary, 
and ethical atmosphere, and it may bo regarded as one 
of the voices crying in the Wilderness which summoned 
the future to larger and nobler views and stimulated the 
capacity to dwell in still more stately mansions. 

A story is on record that Theodore Parker's earnest 
and heroic life dated its first conscious impulse back to 



56 BOSTON DAYS 



an occurrence which he himself often rehited. It seems 
that when Mr. Parker was a boy about twelve years of 
age he was at work one day on his father's farm near 
Lexington, and suddenly a venerable man stood by him. 
His silvery hair and flowing beard impressed the lad as 
somewhat unusual, and for some time the aged man 
walked along by him, talking to him earnestly of all 
that it was possible for a boy to do and to become in 
the world. It made upon hiin a lasting impression, 
and he repeatedly affirmed that the hour became to him 
a conscious date in life, one that initiated all his 
latent force and aspiration. On inquiring as to whence 
the stranger came, no one could tell. It was a country 
neighborhood where any visitor attracted attention, and 
as no one but the lad had seen him, he came in after 
years to half believe that his visitor was of supernormal 
origin. 

The impression that Theodore Parker made upon the 
progress of religion was a deep one, and if its elements 
were a little mixed and love was somewhat tempered 
with aggressiveness, it may be remembered that only 
thus do the Titans of thought shatter the shells and 
husks of dead forms and bid the spirit emerge into 
freedom. Mrs. Howe ranks the hearing of Mr. Parker's 
sermons among tlie blessings and privileges of her life. 
Mrs. Child confessed to her impression that he "was 
the greatest man, morally and intellectually, that our 
country has ever produced." Frances Power Cobbe, 
who was ail in all his most appreciative friend in the 
sense of absolute sympathy of spirit, calls his " Dis- 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 57 

courses of Religion " epoch-raakiug ; and she felt that he 
taught her " to see the evidence of a summer yet to be 
in the buds that lie folded through our northern winter." 
Mr. Parker regarded liis work as in the nature of a 
gospel for ultimate universal acceptance. Perhaps it 
was his misfortune to consider himself as too exclusively 
the channel of that larger truth which was pouring 
itself through many circles not only in the ministry, but 
from press and platform and in literature as well. 
Always indeed the poet's words are true, — 

" God sends his teachers unto every age, 
To every clime, and every race of men, 
With revelations fitted to their growth." 

Theodore Parker's work doubtless benefits a multitude 
who have never identified it with his name. The 
noblest energy, indeed, that a man can contribute to 
progress springs up in a thousand new forms and 
communicates itself through various channels. Dr. 
Bushnell and Henry Ward Beecher were to come ; 
Edward Everett Hale and Phillips Brooks. Notable 
work, too, in the liberation of thought has been done 
by Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage and Dr. Lyman Abbott, 
nor could any r&umd of Boston ministry miss its 
profound recognition of the noble work of Rev. Dr. 
George A. Gordon. 

When Theodore Parker sailed for Europe on that 
voyage from which there was no returning, he sent one 
of his sermons to Mrs. Child with a little note, to 
which she refers in a letter to a friend, saying she shall 



58 BOSTON DAYS 



treasure it among sacred relics, " for my heart misgives 
me," she adds, " that I shall never look upon that 
Socratic head again." Her heart prophesied truly, for 
from this voyage he never returned, and his grave in 
the English cemetery in Florence, where all that was 
mortal of Mrs. Browning, Landor, and Arthur Hugh 
Clough was also laid, is still a shrine of reverent and 
poetic pilgrimage. 

One of the most typically unique characters of those 
early years of the Nineteenth century was Delia Bacon, 
whose life was devoted to the quest of endeavoring to 
prove that Sliakspeare did not write the plays which 
bear his name. Miss Bacon was the modern Cassandra 
of literature. Theodore Bacon, her nephew, has made 
an interesting record of this life, which, beginning in 
privation and the "simplicity of a refined poverty," 
ended in disappointment and distraction. The earliest 
formative influence of the little Delia's life was found in 
the school of Catherine Beecher, of which she became a 
pupil. At this time Harriet Beecher, whom the world 
knows as Mrs. Stowe, was associated in the manage- 
ment of the school. Nearly thirty years afterward 
Catherine Beecher described Delia Bacon as a child of 
" fervent imagination, and tlie embryo of rare gifts of 
eloquence in thought and expression ; pre-eminently 
one who would be pointed out as a genius ; and one, 
too, 80 exuberant and unregulated as to demand con- 
stant pruning and restraint." The religious life of the 
girl was fervent and intense, but marked by the bitter- 
ness and despondency of the time. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 59 

The years went on. She studied, wrote, taught, and 
worked incessantly. Great force, eloquence, imagery, 
characterized her language. She was sensitive, proud, 
finely organized, and knew no rest or care or shelter ; 
and this, as her biographer says, was not a normal or a 
healthful life for a nervous organization of fine intellect- 
ual powers, of strong affections. Her work included, 
at one time, lessons given to classes at Brattle House 
in Cambridge, and Mrs. Farrar mentions her in her 
" Recollections of Seventy Years." In this life of study 
and teaching, her mind at last became fixed on the 
greatest work of English letters, the Shakspearian 
drama. Miss Bacon was in London. Carlyle was her 
friend, though he disavowed any faith in her theories, 
and Hawthorne, to whom she appealed for aid, was 
most considerate and patient. Miss Bacon, while in 
Cambridge giving lessons at Brattle House, made the 
impression on Mrs. Farrar of being " one of Raphael's 
sibyls," who " often spoke like an oracle." There are 
characters sometimes sent into this world who cannot 
be judged from the ordinary standards of human motive 
and achievement. They are fated beings, born to 
fulfil a destiny. They are apparently predestined to a 
certain work, — a work to which all that n)arvellous 
foreordination of heredity, of environment, of place, 
and time, and influence, lead directly toward, and they 
fulfil that destiny. Delia Bacon seems one of those. 

Hawthorne's words on her are those of exquisite 
justice. Of her convictions regarding Shakspeare he 
says : — 



60 BOSTON DAYS 



" What matters it though she call him by some other 
name ? He had wrought on her a greater miracle than 
on all the world besides. This bewildered enthusiast had 
recognized a depth in the man whom she decried, which 
scholars, critics, and learned societies devoted to the elu- 
cidation of his unrivalled scenes had never imagined to 
exist there. She had paid him the loftiest honor that all 
these ages of renown have been able to accumulate upon 
his memory." 

Emerson defines fate as the result of " unpenetrated 
causes." Temperament, too, is fairly synonymous with 
destiny, and this truth, too, is implied in Emerson's 

lines : — 

" Deep in the man sits fast his fate 
To mould his fortunes, rich or great." 

Lydia Maria Child is a striking illustration of this 
theory, for her beautiful temperament dominated and 
fairly transformed outward events. 

Mrs. Child was the most sunny and radiant of spirits. 
She was a wonderful combination of the rational and 
the mystic, but her mysticism was tliat of the spirit and 
never degenerated into mere bombastic rhetoric unrelated 
to significance. Of spurious transcendentalism she was 
swift to prick the bubble ; but she entered with deepest 
sympathy and illuminating intelligence into every form 
of the intimations of immortality. " This marked spec- 
ulative tendency seemed not in the slightest degree to 
affect her practical activities," says Mr. Whittier of her. 
From the speculative thougiit she drew that energy 
which transmitted itself into effort and achievement. 
Her mind was not only well stored, but it was one of 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 6l 

exceptionally original power. She was brilliant in wit 
and repartee. Her husband once remarked to her : 
" I v/ish for your sake, dear, that I were as rich as 
Croesus," to which she flashed back, " You are Croesus, 
for you are king of Lydia." 

She was full of high courage. She was one of the 
great leaders in the cause of human freedom when its 
unpopularity was so great as seriously to threaten loss of 
life and property and reputation to every one who 
embraced it. In the decades of 1820-40 Mrs. Child 
was the best-known literary woman in the United 
States, with fiime and prosperity attending her, both of 
which she imperilled and even lost by writing an article 
entitled, " An Appeal for that Class of Americans called 
Africans." The Athenaeum Library that had bestowed 
on her the honor of its freedom closed its doors to her ; 
the sale of her books and subscriptions to the magazine 
she was editing fell off. Yet of Mrs. Child at this time 
it might well be said : — 

"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched 
crust 
Ere the cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be 
just." 

Mrs. Child experienced both extremes, — " sharing 
the wretched crust " and also living to see the despised 
cause take its place amid the loftiest ranks of sacrifice. 

How wonderfully the Boston of the early part of the 
Nineteentli century rises as a living panorama before 
those who turn the records ! The transcendental 
movement initiated by the little group who formed 



62 BOSTON DAYS 



themselves into a club ; the intellectual problems of 
literature and philosophy as crystallized in the " conver- 
sations " of Margaret Fuller and her circle ; Theodore 
Parker preaching that epoch-making sermon on " The 
Transient and Permanent Elements in Religion ; " Garri- 
son, Phillips, and Mrs. Child leading the forlorn liope 
against slavery ; Lucy Stone inaugurating her great 
work for tlie larger life of womanhood, — and through 
it all the devotion to German pliilosophy, to literature 
in every attainable form, and the constant microscopic 
scrutiny and analysis of life as is revealed in the volu- 
minous letter-writing of the day. 

Born in 1802, Mrs. Cliild lived on until October of 
1880, and she has left a record as one of the most re- 
markable women that America has produced, not alone, 
perhaps not even chiefly, in work, but in character. She 
was gifted with great literary and scholarly ability ; she 
was a woman who, in the days when the larger oppor- 
tunities were denied to women, had still achieved high 
and symmetrical culture. But that culture of character 
which was hers — the living out of divineness, as it 
literally was — transcended all else. 

" Go put your creed 
Into your deed, " 

was her ruling precept. At the age of twenty-six she 
married David Lee Child, a Boston lawyer. Of her 
literary work Mr. Whittier wrote : — 

"It is not too much to say that half a century ago she 
■was the most popular literary woman in the United States. 









-^. 







c^uL- u/^^^^^^i^.^ ^^^c^U 













^_^. 



'7 Ce/^\lJCo'-^ 




'-l^.^Vf^ CeO^U^ '^ eM^^-^T.^^ c^ 






<f 



9^::^^t:^/>^ 




/^^^. ^C^:ui:^ ay^^Cj^ 



W 




/I 











^^ 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 63 

She had published historical novels of uuquestionable 
power of description and characterization, and was widely 
and favorably known as the editor of the 'Juvenile Mis- 
cellany,' which was probably the first periodical in the 
English tongue devoted exclusively to children, and to 
which she was by far the largest contributor. Some of 
the tales and poems from her pen were extensively copied 
and greatly admired." 

Many anecdotes of Mr. Whittier are told iu Mrs. 
Child's letters, and of a visit to him in his home in 
Dauvers in 1860 she said: — 

" Friend Whittier and his gentle Quakerly sister seemed 
delighted to see me, or rather he seemed delighted and 
she seemed pleased. There was a Republican meeting 
that evening, at which he felt obliged to show himself ; 
but lie came back before long, having indiscreetly excused 
himself by stating that I was at his house. The result was 
that a posse of Republicans came, after the meeting was 
over, to look at the woman who ' fired hot shot at Gov- 
ernor Wise.' In the interim, however, I had some cozy 
chat with Friend Whittier, and it was right pleasant going 
over our antislavery reminiscences. Oh, those were glori- 
ous times ! working shoulder to shoulder in such a glow of 
faith! — too eager working for humanity to care a fig 
whether our helpers were priests or infidels. That 's the 
service that is pleasing in the sight of God. 

" Whittier made piteous complaints of time wasted and 
strength exhausted by the numerous loafers who came to 
see him out of mere idle curiosity, or to put up with him 
to save a penny. I was amused to hear his sister describe 
some of those eruptions in her slow, Quakerly fashion. 
'Thee has no idea,' said she, 'how much time Green- 
leaf spends in trying to lose these people in the streets. 



-^ 



64 BOSTON DAYS 



Sometimes lie comes home and says, " Well, sister, I had 
hard work to lose him, but I have lost him."' ' Ihit I 
can never lose a her,' said Whittier, ' The women are 
more pertinacious than the men ; don't thee find 'em so, 
Maria?' I told him I did. 'How does thee manage to 
get time to do anything?' said he. I told him I took care 
to live away from the railroad, and kept a bulldog and a 
pitchfork, and advised him to do the same." 

Mrs. Maria Weston Chapman, the biographer of Miss 
Martineau, was prominently associated in the early anti- 
slavery days with Garrison, Phillij^s, and Mrs. Cliild. 
With them were closely allied Rev. Samnel J. May, Dr. 
and Mrs. Follen, and Mr. and Mrs. Ellis Gray Loring. 
Miss Martineau has left a pen picture of Mrs. Chapman 
which is one to live in literature. Miss Martineau 
writes : — 

" When I was putting on my shawl upstairs, Mrs. Chap- 
man came to me, bonnet in hand, to say, ' You know we 
are threatened with a mob again to-day ; but I do not my- 
self much apprehend it. It must not surprise us ; but my 
hopes are stronger than my fears.' I hear now, as I write, 
the clear silvery tones of her who was to be the friend of 
the rest of my life. I still see the exquisite beauty which 
took me by surpiise that day, — the slender, graceful 
form ; the golden hair which might have covered her to 
her feet ; the brilliant complexion, noble profile, and deep 
blue eyes ; the aspect, meant by nature to be soft and 
winning only, but that day (as ever since) so vivified by 
courage, and so strengthened by upright conviction, as to 
appear the very embodiment of heroism. ' My hopes,' 
said she, as she threw up her golden hair under her 
bonnet, ' are stronger than my fears.' " 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 65 

Miss Martineau left so strong an impression on 
Boston that fifty years later it crystallized into a pur- 
pose to place her statue in Wellesley, the " College 
Beautiful." The commission to execute it was fittingly 
given to Anne Whitney, poet and sculptor, and the 
occasion of its unveiling — in the Old South Church, in 
December of 1883, was the last public appearance of 
Wendell Phillips. 

Of the sculptor's work Mrs. Livermore said : — 

"Miss Whitney has, in this instance, unconsciously 
put much of herself — much of the simple, genuine, 
almost divine womanhood she herself lived out, and the 
result is a marvellous statue of Harriet Martineau. 
As you look you find yourself repeating the lines of 
Lamartine : — 

" * At her feet the poor flung palms, 

And holy women wept their blessing.' " 

The birthplace and early home of Wendell Phillips 
was in the old West End, his father's house being at 
the corner of Beacon and Walnut streets. He was 
born in 1811, and his death, in February of 1884, was 
an event that marked the close of a thrilling chapter 
of Boston history. His majestic manhood is known to 
all. Stronger than John Bright, more eloquent than 
Victor Hugo, he even transcended both in his devotion 
to humanity. His public career was an epic poem ; his 
domestic life an idyl. 

No tribute has been paid to him that is at once 
so noble, eloquent, and poetic as that of John Boyle 

5 



66 BOSTON DAYS 



O'Reilly, who fairly embalmed the entire biography of 
Wendell Phillips in these lines : — 

" Come, workers ; here was a teacher, and the lesson he taught 

was good ; 
There are no classes or races, but one human brotherhood; 
There are no creeds to be hated, no colors of skin debarred ; 
Mankind is one in its rights and wrongs — one right, one hope, 

one guard ; 
The right to be free, and the hope to be just, and the guard 

against selfish greed. 
By his life he taught, by his death we learn, the great reformer's 

creed ; 
And the unseen chaplet is brightest and best which the toil-worn 

hands lay down 
On his coffin, with grief, love, honor — their sob, their kiss, and 

their crown. 

From the midst of the flock he defended the brave one has gone 

to his rest ; 
And the tears of the poor he befriended their wealth of affliction 

attest. 
From the midst of the people is stricken a symbol they daily 

saw, 
Set over against the law books, of a Higher than Human Law ; 
For his life was a ceaseless protest, and his voice was a prophet's 

cry 
To be true to the truth and faithful, though the world were 

arrayed for the Lie. 

" From the hearing of those who hated, the threatening voice has 

past ; 
But the lives of those who believe to the death are not blown like 

a leaf on the blast. 
A sower of infinite seed was he, a woodman that hewed to the 

light, 
Who dared to be traitor to Union when the Union was traitor 

to Ei"ht ! " 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 67 

William Lloyd Garrison was six years the senior of 
Wendell Phillips. Their lives were closely associated 
in the antislavery struggle, — a conflict whose scenes 
are difficult to realize in the present. Colonel Higginson 
has said of Mr. Garrison : " I never saw a countenance 
that could be compared with his in respect to moral 
strength and force ; he seems the visible embodiment 
of something deeper and more controlling than mere 
intellect. . . . He did the work of a man of iron in an 
iron age," adds Colonel Higginson, and writes, also, that 
" in the Valhalla of contemporary statues in Boston, 
two only — those of Webster and Everett — commemo- 
rate conservatives in the antislavery conflict, while all 
the rest, Lincoln, Quincy, Sumner, Andrew, Mann, 
Garrison, and Shaw, represent the party of attack." 
To which list might well be added Colonel Higginson's 
own honored name, and that of Mr. Frank B. Sanborn. 

Wendell Phillips came from one of what Dr. Holmes 
so well terms the " Academic families " of New Eng- 
land, — families who, from generation to generation, 
are college-bred men. The father of Wendell Phillips 
was a man of wealth and prominence, at one time the 
Mayor of Boston, and his home was one of ease and 
culture. Mr. Phillips graduated from Harvard in the 
class of 1831, — Motley, the historian, being his class- 
mate. Colonel Higginson, in his fascinating volume 
called " Contemporaries," pictures the dramatic initia- 
tion of the career of Phillips in witnessing the mobbing 
of Garrison in 1835. " To the antislavery cause," says 
Colonel Higginson, " he sacrificed his social position, 



68 BOSTON DAYS 



his early friendships, his professional career. . . . Being 
rich, he made himself, as it were, poor through life, 
reduced all his personal wants to the lowest terms, 
earned all the money he could by lecturing, and gave 
away all he could spare. . . . He was fortunate in 
wedding a wife in perfect sympathy with him, — a life- 
long invalid, yet with such indomitable courage, such 
keenness of wit, such insight into character, that she 
really divided with him the labors of his career. , . . 
They lived on Essex Street, . . . the house was plain 
and bare without and within, but peace and courage 
ruled." 

On this Essex Street house in which Mr. Phillips 
lived there is now placed this tablet : — 

Here 
Wendell Phillips resided during forty years, 
Devoted by him to efforts to secure 
The abolition of African slavery in this country. 



The charms of home, the enjoyment of wealth and learning, 
Even the kindly recognition of his fellow-citizens. 
Were by him accounted as naught compared with duty. 



He lived to see justice triumphant, freedom universal, 
And to receive the tardy praises of his former opponents. 
The blessings of the poor, the friendless, and the oppressed 
enriched him. 



In Boston 
He was born 29 November, 1811, and died 2 February, 1884. 



This tablet was erected in 1894, by order of the City Council of 
Boston. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 69 

Mrs. Howe fitly characterizes the first speech of 
Wendell Phillips in Faneuil Hall as the hour when the 
Pentecostal flame visited him. Mrs. Child says of one 
of the early antislavery meetings : — 

" I know there were very formidable preparations to 
mob the antislavery meeting the next day ; I was excited 
and anxious, not for myself, but for "Wendell Phillips. 
Hour after hour of the night I heard the clock strike, 
while visions were passing through my mind of that noble 
head assailed by murderous hands. This meeting was 
that of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and it 
was on this occasion that Mr. Phillips, when his voice 
was drowned by the mob, stooped forward and addressed 
his speech to the reporters. Colonel Higginson made 
himself heard above the storm, and James Freeman 
Clarke, whose speech preceded that of Mr. Phillips, was 
' treated with such boisterous insults that he was often 
obliged to pause.' " 

On the Sunday evening following the death of Mr. 
Phillips, Colonel Higginson addressed a meeting in the 
Parker Memorial, and he gave a most discriminating 
analysis of Mr. Phillips, — the finest and truest insight 
that has yet been formulated. 

" After slavery had disappeared," said Colonel Higgin- 
son, " Mr. Phillips, like other old abolitionists, men and 
women, was left for a moment without a mission. The 
minor causes they had advocated seemed hardly enough 
for a lifework. Some of them found no work worth 
doing after slavery fell. Garrison, more happy by his 
calm, clear temperament, devoted himself to a few strong, 
clear, thoroughly comprehended causes, and lived and 



70 BOSTON DAYS 



died for them. Wendell Phillips, more varied in his 
impulses, more impassioned, less self-controlled, was less 
his own master in the absence of his one great purpose. 
He seemed like a man feeling around for an object. He 
grasped here, there, and everywhere for a new mission, a 
new cause, new interests, always heroic, always dis- 
interested, but having with that the disadvantage that 
a man who had devoted the prime of his life to one great, 
clear, easily comprehended reform, had lost the study and 
training that are needed to grasp the more complex 
reforms that followed the fall of slavery. The anti- 
slavery movement was the simplest of all reforms in its 
principles. It needed but to grasp one thought, — that 
man could not lawfully hold property in man. That given, 
the intellectual work was done. That time passed, and 
there came the complex reforms of to-day, — labor reform 
and its immense difficulties, communism, socialism, and 
nihilism, questions of currency and tariff, which tax the 
strongest intellect. In the midst of these, Wendell 
Phillips found himself unable to grasp them. He carried 
to them the simple force of his antislavery principles, 
but the questions were not to be settled so easily. The 
questions of capital and labor, of distribution and re- 
adjustment, the complicated relation of the human race, 
cannot be so easily settled. He was at a disadvantage 
of the complex questions. Hence the chafing in all his 
later life of a spirit heroic, magnificently unselfish, yet 
constantly fretting with the problems which he had 
grappled too late in life for their full comprehension, 
while he had an unwillingness to own that he stood at the 
threshold, which alone would have enabled him fully to 
comprehend them. With that came, in later years, an 
unconsciousness of the strength of his assertions and the 
vehemence of his denunciations. He thought that all 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 71 

who were abused by respectable portious of society were 
abused as Garrison was, and must be right. When we 
think of the weakened strength with which he grasped 
great, difficult problems which are arising among us, we 
may well feel grateful that the measure of one man's 
activity is fourscore years, when he may be dismissed 
with the benediction that he has gone to his reward." 

The funeral of Wendell Phillips was an impressive 
occasion. Among those present were the poet Whittier, 
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Colonel Higginson, Frederick 
Douglass, Louisa M. Alcott, Rev. Dr. Bartol, Mrs. 
Annie Fields, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Dr. H. B. Blackwell, 
Miss Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Phillips Brooks, the 
sons of Garrison, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, Miss Anne 
Whitney, Dr. Bowditch, Elizur Wright, Theodore Weld, 
Abby Morton Diaz, John Boyle O'Reilly, President 
Eliot, of Harvard; the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, 
Rev. M. J. Savage, James Freeman Clarke, Frank B. 
Sanborn, the Governor of Massachusetts (then Hon. 
George D. Robinson) and his staff, and many of the 
immortals. 

There was an entire absence of floral decorations, but 
a simple sheaf of wheat was placed on the casket. 
The pall-bearers included Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Judge Samuel E. Sewall, and Wendell Garrison. 

The gathering was a thoroughly American one, all 
nationalities, creeds, and colors being represented. The 
colored element was particularly prominent. 

The choir sang Mr. Whittier's beautiful poem in 
which the stanza occurs : — 



7^ 



BOSTON DAYS 



" God calls our loved ones, but we lose not wholly 
What He hath given : 
They live on earth in thought and deed as truly 
As in His heaven." 

The services consisted only in a prayer by the Rev. 
Samuel Longfellow (the poet's brother), the singing of 
a hymn written for the occasion, and a prayer by the 
Rev. Samuel May. In the prayer by Mr. Longfellow he 
said : — 

" "We bless Thee for all that lifts up our lives to a 
nobler plan and a worthier aim ; for the heroes, the saints, 
the martyrs, who lived by faith in ideas, in principles, in 
the things unseen, but most real; for the good who lived 
to bless and help their fellows ; for the faithful who lived 
for duty; for the true who have chosen to obey God 
rather than man, willingly bearing the cross in bearing 
witness to the truth. They have left us an example that 
we should follow in their steps, and make our lives worthy 
and unselfish and noble, and live not for the things that 
perish, but for those that ai'e immortal." 

Frederick Douglass, as he gazed upon the sculptured 
beauty of that grand face sealed with the majesty of 
death, said brokenly : " I came not here alone only 
to see the remains of my dear old friend ; I wanted to 
see this throng, and to see the hold that this man had 
upon the comnumity. It is a wonderful tribute." 

The floodgates of reminiscence and anecdote and 
memory seemed opened by the transition of Wendell 
Phillips to the Unseen, and there was such an illumina- 
tion on that historic and tragic past of forty years ago 
as almost made it real to the younger generation. As 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 73 

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in referring to the services, 
said, " It was noticeable how they all spoke to God 
and did not speak to men." 

The burial scene was very simple and dramatic. The 
Phillips family tomb in the " Old Granary " burying- 
ground was near the gates opening on Tremont Street, 
where the ceaseless tide of city life surged up and 
down, and the pulse never ceases to throb. It was 
fitting that Mr, Phillips should rest there — in the heart 
of the city he so loved. 

It was five o'clock of that gray February day, with 
the misty light rapidly deepening into evening, when 
the funeral cortege reached the gates. The sidewalk 
was filled with people. A long line of horse-cars were 
blocked by the crowd. The roofs and walls and every 
window in the vicinity was crowded. The casket was 
laid, simply and reverently, in the tomb in which his 
father, John Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston, rests, 
and which is near the tombs of Samuel Adams, of Paul 
Revere, of John Hancock, of Peter Faneuil, and the 
father and mother of Franklin. 

The beautiful words of Mr. O'Reilly were on the air : 

" Come, brothers, here to the burial ! But weep not, rather 
rejoice, 

For his fearless life and his fearless death ; for his true, un- 
equalled voice, 

Like a silver trumpet sounding the note of human right ; 

For his brave heart always ready to enter the weak one's fight ; 

For his soul unmoved by the mob's wild shout or the social 
sneer's disgrace ; 

For his freeborn spirit, that drew no line between class and 
creed and race." 



74 BOSTON DAYS 



111 later years it was found that the tide of pilgrimage 
to the grave of Phillips was so incessant that the body 
was removed to another burying-ground. 

Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis is a brilliant name in the 
Boston galaxy, as one with whom patriotism was 
a passion. She was a woman of fine culture and of cos- 
mopolitan experience. She had been presented at 
almost every European court ; she had probably the 
greatest social prestige that had at that time been given 
to any American woman ; she had the entree of royal 
circles and the nobility, as well as of art and literature ; 
and from years of life in Europe, of the most brilliant 
and distinguished character, she returned to Boston 
with enlarged and renewed ardor of patriotic devotion 
to her own country. 

Elizabeth Boardmau Otis was the daughter of William 
and Elizabeth (Henderson) Boardmau. Her father 
was a wealthy merchant of the India and China trade, 
which, in the early years of the century, was the chief 
source of Boston's wealth. Her mother was the 
daughter of Joseph Henderson, the first sheriff of Suf- 
folk County, whose sword is preserved among the relics 
in the old State House. Miss Boardmau received the 
most careful education and the most exquisite culture 
that the best masters could give, combined with every 
social opportunity and with travel. While still a young 
girl she made a brilliant marriage. Harrison Gray Otis 
was the son of the ISIayor of Boston at that time, and 
bore his father's name. The Otis family stood among 
the highest in the land, but social distinction was not 






THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 75 

an aim with Mrs. Otis. She was born to it ; she 
always had it as inseparable from her personality ; she 
took it as naturally as the air she breathed, and 
thought nothing of it in itself. Her aims and ideals 
were of a lofty character. Mr. Otis died in his early 
life, and Mrs. Otis took her four young sons to Europe 
where they remained several years for their better study 
of language and art. She was herself an admirable 
linguist, speaking four or five languages, and her life 
abroad was thus rendered most brilliant and delightful. 
It was somewhere in the '40's that she returned to 
Boston. She was born about 1803 and died in 1873. 
At this time Boston was a small town, where one could 
go anywhere in ten minutes ; where people all knew 
each other and took the keenest interest in each other's 
personality and work. jMrs. Otis embraced with ardor 
the stirring philanthropic interests of the day. The 
asylum for the blind, of which Dr. Samuel G. Howe 
was then at the head, engaged her interest ; the '' Snug 
Harbor" for disabled sailors; the securing funds for 
Thomas Ball's equestrian statue of Washington, and 
the purchase of Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon. 
To complete the fund for the latter, Mrs. Otis gave a 
ball at the Boston Theatre on March 4, 1859, which is 
chronicled as being " more splendid in arrangement, 
more beautiful in its array of fair women and brave 
men, and nobler in its purpose than anything which has 
ever preceded it." The scene is said to have been one 
of unsurpassed magnificence, and the sum of $10,000 
was realized for the purpose. 



16 BOSTON DAYS 



On Washington's birthday Mrs. Otis always opened her 
house for a public reception. The spacious rooms were 
decorated in the national colors and filled with flowers 
sent by friends. All day the throng of citizens, high and 
low, rich and poor, poured through her portals, and each 
and all were welcomed with that grace and high-bred 
courtesy that so peculiarly distinguished this lady. The 
woman who merely affects the air of the great lady de- 
lights in being described as " very exclusive ; " but the 
genuine great lady is, by that very attribute, inclusive, 
and overflowing with generous good-will to all hu- 
manity. The military processions passing the house of 
Mrs. Otis on this day paused and saluted her. Her 
home is still standing, — a spacious house on the corner 
of Mount Vernon and Joy streets, in the West End, — 
but it is now used for a boarding-house. It was Mrs. 
Otis who, on her return from Europe, inaugurated 
a fuller and freer social life in Boston. She was far and 
away the most cosmopolitan woman that Boston had 
seen, and it was an era in social life when she in- 
troduced a season of Saturday afternoon and Thursday 
evening receptions, after the informal European fashion, 
serving only tea and cake, and tlms inaugurating a 
finer and more easy hospitality. On one of these re- 
ceptions it chanced that tliere were present the Pres- 
ident of the United States (then Mr. Fillmore), Lord 
Elgin, the Governor-General of Canada and his suite, 
and several other very noted men of the day. The 
Otis mansion was the centre of the most brilliant 
and distinguished Boston life, and to Mrs. Otis all 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 77 

visitors from Europe of rank and distinction invariably 
brought letters. 

It was, however, in the work of the Civil War — the 
sanitary commission work — that ISIadame Otis, as she 
came to be called, contributed what was perhaps the 
greatest service of her life. A large building on Tremont 
Street was given up to the work, and the government 
gave its entire charge into the hands of Madame Otis. 
All goods and money for the use of the soldiers were 
deposited there. Her splendid energy, her noble ardor 
of patriotism, her irresistible enthusiasm, and great ad- 
ministrative ability made her the most efficient and 
valuable aid to the government. One of her first acts 
was to establish a " Bank of Faith," and to this contri- 
butions flowed in. During the three years she was in 
charge, over $1,000,000 came in, and not one penny of 
this was solicited. Is it not a remarkable instance of 
the absolute reliance in the most practical way that 
may always be placed on the Divine power for sending 
the aid that is needed for a just and holy cause ? The 
entire system of aid was based on voluntary dona- 
tions. During these three years she never missed 
being at her post from ten to three each day, save 
on Sundays and religious festivals. Madame Otis 
left an impress upon Boston life that still remains 
vividly. 

While her work had not the marvellous scope which 
characterized Mrs. Livermore's during the Civil War, 
as Mrs. Livermore's was national and that of Madame 
Otis restricted to the New England States, it was of the 



78 BOSTON DAYS 



same generous and noble quality which so signally im- 
mortalizes that of Mary A. Livermore. 

The literary homes of Boston were a signal feature 
of the city. The home of Prof. George Ticknor, the 
Spanish historian, stood on the corner of Park and 
Beacon streets, and there for forty years a cordial and 
gracious hospitality prevailed. After fifteen years at 
Harvard, Professor Ticknor was succeeded by the poet 
Longfellow, and in 1835 he went abroad with his 
family, remaining four years and sharing the social life 
of courts and nobility. It was at the Ticknor house 
that Lafayette was entertained when in Boston, at a 
little Sunday night supper which is still famous in 
Boston annals. Among other guests were President 
and Mrs. Quincy, Daniel Webster, and Mr. Prescott. 

The Adams family were then, as always, prominent in 
all that made for the local as well as the national de- 
velopments of progress. The comparative modernity 
of the Republic is emphasized by the fact that the 
great-grandson of its second President, John Adams, 
died within the last decade, with a more fomous brother 
still living. John Quincy Adams, grandson of the Presi- 
dent whose name he bears, great-grandson of John 
Adams, who succeeded Washington., and the son of 
Charles Francis Adams, the first Republican Minister 
to the Court of St. James, died at his home. Mount 
Wollaston, Quincy, at the comparatively early age of 
sixty-one. In a national sense he was hardly prominent, 
but a deep interest is associated with his honored and 
historic name. The antiquarian might prowl about the 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 79 

quaint old towns of Quincy, Quincy Adams, Braintree, 
and the estate of Mount Wollaston with no little 
reward. The three towns are a little out of Boston, 
and the resident traveller is always amused to see the 
way strangers throw open the car windows and lean 
out and gaze as the quaint names are called by the 
conductor. The widow of Col. Edmund Quincy died 
in Braintree in 1700, and Judge Sewall, who attended 
the funeral, thus describes the event in his journal, 
which is preserved among historical documents. 

" Because of the porrige of snow [writes Judge Sewall] 
the bearers rid to the grave, alighting a little before they 
came there. Manners, Cousin Edward and his sister rid 
first ; then Mrs. Anna Quincy, widow, behind Mr. Allen, 
and Cousin Ruth Hunt behind her husband." 

The conscious way in which people took themselves 
in those days has resulted in leaving the most minute 
records of trifles. Very little happened, and thus they 
had abundance of time to set it down. Even in the 
literary life of the Nineteenth century, whenever two or 
three Bostonians met together in the home of culture 
they seem to have always gone home and written down 
their respective remarks. In one of Louisa Alcott's 
diary records she notes of an evening : " Mr. Parker 
[Theodore Parker] came to me and said, ' Well, child, 
how goes it ? ' ' Pretty well, sir.' * That 's brave,' he said." 

In all the diaries of the Alcotts, Emerson, Margaret 
Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, Sophia Hawthorne, and 
Miss Peabody, the reader constantly finds recorded the 



80 BOSTON DAYS 



remarks some one has made durins; a call or meetiiior. 
" I met Mr. Emerson by the large tree near the two 
roads. He said : ' It is a fine day,' " is a typical speci- 
men hardly exaggerated. It illustrates the serious way 
that they all took themselves and each other. The 
infinite entertainment afi'orded by all those old records 
is not the least of the enjoyments of living in the very 
heart of their atmosphere. 

In the old Quincy house at Braintree there is one 
room still hung with curious Chinese paper placed 
there in 1777 to prepare to do honor to the marriage of 
Dorothy Quincy and John Hancock. The house in 
which John Adams died is still extant, incorporated 
with the larger mansion built on its site, and in it is 
still one room panelled, from floor to ceiling, in solid 
mahogany. The Adams genealogy, including the 
Quincy, Hoar, and Norton branches, is a matter of 
national history and need not be touched upon here. 
Dr. Holmes, as is widely known by his witty poem 
" Dorothy Q.," traces a family connection with the 
Quincys, and Wendell Phillips and Phillips Brooks 
were remotely connected with each other and with 
Dr. Holmes through the Wendells. Prof Charles 
Eliot Norton, of Harvard, traces his ancestry to the 
Nortons who intermarried with the Quincys. New 
England genealogy — if one has a taste for social 
analysis and the study of hereditary traits — offers a 
very fascinating field, as the individualities are so prom- 
inent and as they represent ideas, movements, and the 
general forces of progress. 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 81 

Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England under 
Lincoln, was a remarkable man. John Quincj Adams, 
who had been locally prominent in politics, rather 
endured than desired political office ; he was a good 
citizen in his town of Quincy, where he had always 
lived, passing the winter in his town house on Mount 
Vernon Street in Boston. The Adams family are not 
imaginative and ardent by temperament, but they are 
conspicuous for sound intellect, cool, calm, and more or 
less dispassionate views ; they are logical, honorable, and 
just. Many people believe the calm, dispassionate one 
to be the genuine New England type, but nothing could 
be more remote from the truth. New England is the 
land of romance, of poetry, of imaginative grace, of 
spiritual fervor, of idealism. It is the home of the 
mystic. If one can find and fit the magic key he can 
open and read at will many a curious volume of for- 
gotten history. There have been such treasures of 
moral earnestness, of religious faith, of spiritual ecstasy 
poured out in New England that it has become trans- 
muted into a certain fine exaltation of life — into artistic 
and creative energy. 

The most notable member of the Adams family of 
late years is Charles Francis Adams, Senior, a lawyer, a 
railway magnate, and a man of letters. One of the 
ablest, the most fascinating and significant contributions 
to contemporary literature is his great work, " Three 
Episodes of Massachusetts History." 

Before the decade of 1840-50 few Bostonians left 
their homes for the summer ; but the Ticknors always 

6 



82 BOSTON DAYS 



went to Nahant or Portland ; the Prescotts had their 
country house ; Mr. Longfellow had a cottage at 
Nahant ; Mrs. Howe a cottage near Newport, and in 
the summer that Tennyson's poem " In Memoriam " 
was first published, George William Curtis and Charles 
Sumner journeyed there to read with Mrs. Howe the 
wonderful new poem that thrilled two nations. 

There was an occultation of correspondence In those 
days among the choice spirits. A little (undated) note 
from Emerson to Whipple thus runs : — 

Concord, Saturday Morning. 

Dear Whipple, — I believe you bade me come to 
your house to-morrow evening, and I was to make a reply 
later. I hope it is not too late honorably to say that 
Samuel Ward had asked me for the same hour, a little 
before you at the club, but with a little uncertainty about 
his being in town. But now he is, and has got my boy 
there with him, and his family are such uncertain, transient 
meteors that I think I must go. So you shall let me pay 
my respects to you another day. 

Ever yours, 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

The loneliness of James Russell Lowell in those days 
of his early poetic flights is revealed in the following 
letter written by him to Mr. Whipple, who at that time 
was editing a paper called the "Boston Notion." Mr. 
Lowell did not even know the name of the editor whose 
recognition of his powers was almost the first he had 
received, but in his grateful appreciation of it he wrote 
as follows : — 




iM ^ 4 






C/i 



5-4 



V5 



r 

g 




i^ 






'tn f 



^ 



It 



1 "^ 






Jl ^ 



i 



^ 



i 



J "^ 







THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 83 

Boston, Oct. 12, 1841. 
My dear Editor, — You are to me a mere nominus 
umbra, — but confident that you are somebody or other, I 
wish to thank you for your kind notice of me in last Satur- 
day's " Notion." I regard unkind criticism as little as need 
be, — yet it is owing to puffing obtained by utterly worthless 
and mediocre poets, and the ease with which they obtain 
access to the columns of newspapers, too common in this 
country. But these unknown friends which the poor 
poet makes, — these hands stretched out to give him a 
grasp of grateful encouragement across whole oceans or 
continents, — these make up for many troubles. Is it 
not strange that poets who must be the warmest hearted of 
men should most often be the hardliest educated? It was 
very grateful to me as I took up your paper in a public 
room, where there was but one face in many that I knew, 
and saw some kuid words about myself, to think that, 
perchance, the writer was now in the room and that 
among these strangers I yet had a friend. I send you 
my volume, which I hope you will like, and if you find 
anything congenial in the enclosed poem, print it in your 
next "Notion." And so, my good unknown, I am yours 

in sympathy, 

James Kussell Lowell. 

P. S. — It just occurred to me that some editors prefix 
the notes of their correspondence to their verses. If you 
print my poem, do not print this. 

J. R. L. 

The home of Mr. Longfellow was a centre of emi- 
nent and beautiful hospitalities. In 1852 Kossuth, the 
Hungarian patriot and exile, accompanied by his friends, 
Count and Countess Pulszky, visited Boston. Mr. Long- 
fellow gave a dinner for them at which Mrs. Howe was 



84 BOSTON DAYS 



also a guest. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " had appeared, and 
the poet records that every evening he and Mrs. Long- 
fellow read themselves into despair over that tragic 
story of which one million copies were sold within the 
first year of its publication. 

" The Scarlet Letter " was published and made a 
profound impression. Charlotte Cushman was playing, 
and in one of Victor Hugo's dramas, the " Actress of 
Padua," she especially interested Mr. Longfellow, al- 
though he thought her acting too powerful and says, 
"I like less acting better." Dr. and Mrs. Howe, 
Charles Sumner, and INlr. and IVIrs. Longfellow shared a 
box on the occasion of the premiere of this play, Jenny 
Lind entranced the music-lovers and the populace alike, 
and a group of sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
appeared in " Graham's Magazine," inciting discussion : 
President Quincy of Harvard was then living, " hale and 
hearty at the age of eighty," as Longfellow records, and 
knowing everything except, perhaps, his own name, 
which tradition says that he forgot on one occasion 
when in the post office inquiring for his mail. Fanny 
Kemble Butler came with her glowing interpretations 
of Shakspeare, reading " The Tempest," " Romeo and 
Juliet," " Macbeth," and other plays, and of the former 
Mr. Longfellow writes : — 

" We went to hear Mrs. Butler read ' The Tempest.' 
A crowded house. A reading-desk covered with red, on 
a platform, like the gory block on the scaffold; upon 
which the magnificent Fanny bowed her head in tears and 
great emotion. But in a moment it became her triumphal 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 85 

chariot. What glorious reading ! the spiritual Ariel, the 
stern Prospero, the lover Ferdinand, Miranda the beloved, 
Stefano, Trinculo, Caliban, — each had a voice distinct 
and separate, as of many actors. And what a glorious 
poem is ' The Tempest ! ' — hardly a play, for its dramatic 
interest is its least interest. It is an emblem of the 
power of mind over matter. Ariel is an embodied thought 
projected from Prospero, obeying his will, subduing and 
controlling the elements. It is the apotheosis of intellect. 
The poet's hand here sweeps the whole harp of human 
life, from Ariel to Caliban, the great bass string." 

Wagner's music was beginning to be known even 
in the early fifties, and Mr. Longfellow accompanied 
INIrs. Howe to an orchestral concert when the wonder- 
ful overture to Tannhauser was produced. Jenny Lind 
with the young pianist, Mr. Goldschmidt, who after- 
ward became her husband, went out to call on the poet 
and lunched with him and Mrs. Longfellow ; Sumner 
dined with them, and they gave a farewell dinner to 
Hawthorne, on the eve of his sailing for his consulate at 
Liverpool, at which the guests were Emerson, Arthur 
Hugh Clough, Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton. Dr. 
and Mrs. Howe give a dinner at which Sumner Adams 
and Palfrey are guests, and Mr. Longfellow notes that 
he, a singer, came in as Alfred among the Danes. 
Arthur Hugh Clough, then visiting Boston, gave a din- 
ner at his hotel, the old Tremont House, to Emerson, 
and invited Mr. Longfellow, Charles Sumner, Horatio 
Greenough, the sculptor, Lowell, Hawthorne, and 
Theodore Parker, and they all adjourned to Music Hall 
to hear Alboni. Mrs. Browning's " Drama of Exile " 



BOSTON DAYS 



appeared, and all literary Boston read it. The tragedy 
of Margaret Fuller's death occurred, and Mr. Longfellow 
writes : — 

" The papers bring us news of the wreck of the ' Eliza- 
beth ' on Fire Island, and the loss of Horace Sumner, 
and of Margaret Fuller, Marchioness d'Ossoli, with her 
husband and cliild. AVhat a calamity ! A singular woman 
for New England to produce ; original and somewhat self- 
willed ; but full of talent and full of work. A tragic end 
to a somewhat troubled and romantic life." 

A potent and beneficent individuality of those days 
was Elizabeth Peabody, the sister-in-law of Horace 
Mann and of Nathaniel Hawthorne ; the friend of 
Channing, Allston, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Mar- 
garet Fuller, Sarah Holland Adams, James Freeman 
Clarke ; of Motley, Bayard Taylor, Bronson Alcott ; of 
Mazzini, Froebel, Carlyle, Lord Houghton, George 
Eliot, and many another of the greatest minds of a half 
century ago, — a woman who lived much in the lives 
of other people. She was the friend, the sympathizer, 
the inspirer of ideas. She cared nothing for personal 
fame, and everything for personal service. 

Hawthorne and Elizabeth Peabody were close friends 
before he became engaged to her younger sister, Sophia, 
and on her return one day from an absence it is said 
that, observing the sympathy of attraction between 
them, she said, " I now take you both into my heart." 

All the forces of heredity predestined Elizabeth 
Peabody as an educator. Her father, ])r. Nathaniel 
Peabody, met the woman who became his wife while 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 87 

he was teaching a school for boys and she one for girls 
in Andover. This was in 1800. Two years later they 
were married, and in May of 1804 Elizabeth Peabody 
was born in Billerica, a little village between Lowell 
and Boston, where Mrs. Peabody had established a 
boarding-school for girls. The mother was a trained 
English scholar with cultivated tastes and never-failing 
aspirations. The father was a classical student and 
taught his daughter Latin in her earliest childhood. 
Their home was of refining and uplifting influences. 
They had no money, but they had possessions more 
valuable. 

Miss Peabody was one of that remarkable group of 
persons born in or near Boston in those early years of the 
past century. She began teaching at the age of sixteen 
(in 1820), and her intellectual activity hardly waned 
from that date until about 1888 or 1889. At one time 
she had a class of girls in Salem whom she instructed in 
literature ; she had a school on Mount Vernon Street 
in Boston, and she assisted Mr. Alcott in the famous 
school he established in this city. On Sept. 22, 1839, 
Mr. Alcott records in his diary : — 

" I opened school to-day with thirty children, and am 
assisted by Miss Peabody, who unites intellectual and 
practical qualities of no common order. Her proposition 
to aid me comes from the deep interest she feels in 
human culture. ... I have spared no pains to surround 
the pupils with appropriate emblems of intellectual and 
spiritual life. Paintings, busts, books, have been deemed 
important. I wish to fill every form that dresses the 



88 BOSTON DAYS 



senses with significance and life, so that whatever is seen, 
said, or done sliall picture ideal beauty and perfection, 
thus placing the child in a scene of tranquil repose and 
spiritual loveliness." 

Somewhere in the early decade of 1830-40, the 
Peabodys removed to a house on West Street in this 
city, where Miss Peabody utilized their front room as a 
foreign book store and circulating library. She im- 
ported the French and German books of the day, and 
this room became a meeting place, a " literary centre," 
where groups of the people who were making the 
thought of the day could be found. There would drop 
in Emerson, Dr. Hedge, James Freeman Clarke, and 
Margaret Fuller. The idea of the Church of the 
Disciples first occurred to Dr. Clarke in this room. 

The Boston of this time was one that dined at two 
p. M. ; that found its artistic ecstasies largely satisfied 
with what Henry James has since termed the '^ attenu- 
ated drawings" of Flaxman ; that took a strong and 
abiding interest in the movements for greater liberty 
and progress in Europe, sympathizing with Kossuth and 
Mazzini ; that read its German classics and held the 
faith of the absolute supremacy of the spiritual life. 
Their special diversion appears to have been " Conver- 
sations." There was held (in 1848) a series of these 
on "Self-Knowledge," in which Emerson, Thoreau, 
Theodore Parker, W. H. Channing, Miss Peabody, 
Mrs. Cheney, and James Freeman Clarke all took part. 

In 1867 Miss Peabody again revisited Europe and 
passed a winter at Rome. Every morning she break- 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 89 

fasted with Charlotte Cushman — by Miss Cushmaii's 
invitation — and of this time she says in a letter to a 
friend : — 

" Never was my mind in such a state of activity. 
It seems to me that I came to my mental majority that 
year, and all my own life and the world's life, as history 
had taught it to me, was explained. . . . Do you recollect 
how I used to come and announce my discoveries in the 
world of morals and spiritual life, whose gates seemed to 
be opened to me by the historical monuments as well as 
the masterpieces of art? What golden hours those were 
when such grand receptive hearts and imaginations 
bettered one's thoughts in the reply ! " 

The initiation of that reform whose fulfilment came 
so slowly — the political enfranchisement of women — 
was a stirring and vital idea of these days, led by sweet 
Lucy Stone. 

In this great movement, which has been less the 
emancipation than the development and advancement 
of woman's life, Lucy Stone was easily the most 
potent factor. Her life pre-eminently stands for the 
development of humanity. No woman of the present 
or the future is so great or so fortunate as not to receive 
benefit from the life of this woman, who was born into 
the simple and primitive conditions of a farmer's 
daughter in New England. No woman of the present 
or the future is so humble or so obscure as not to have 
her life broadened, her possibilities enlarged, because 
Lucy Stone has lived. Her personality inspires such 
tender remembrance that it is a little difficult to exclude 



90 BOSTON DAYS 



all personal feeling and sketch dispassionately the out- 
line of this great, this noble and beautiful life. The 
pen falters, and the eye sees only dimly through tears 
that silent home where the music of her voice is stilled, 
and from which her spirit went forth to its larger 
ministry. Yet it is good to dwell on this life that was 
lived so serenely, so bravely, so resplendently before us. 
We may well pause before it as at a sacrament. 

Lucy Stone was born near West Brookfield, Mass., 
on Aug. 13, 1818, the daughter of Francis and Hannah 
H. (Matthews) Stone. Of a family of nine children she 
was the eighth. She was but eight years the junior 
of Margaret Fuller, whose comparatively early death 
seems to throw her a generation farther backward. 
She was one year the senior of Julia Ward Howe and 
of James Russell Lowell. The years from 1803 to 
1824 are luminous in New England history with the 
appearance of the constellation of great spirits who came 
as teachers to their century. They, our poets and 
prophets, have shaped our Nation's destiny. In his 
chancellor's address before the University of New York 
in 1890 George William Curtis said : — 

" Amid the exaltation and commotion of material success 
let this university here annually announce in words and 
deeds the dignity and superiority of the intellectual and 
spiritual life, and strengthen itself to resist the insidious 
invasion of that life by the superb and seductive spirit of 
material prosperity." 

These words convey the essence of the spirit in which 
this group of rare and noble persons of that time 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 91 

lived and which they taught to the world. They 
stood for the supremacy of the higher life over the 
lower, and among them all no braver or more resolute 
work was done for humanity's uplifting than the per- 
sonal work of Lucy Stone. 

Her ancestry is what in New England parlance 
is called " good New England stock." The expression 
defines a certain flawless integrity of life that the 
Pilgrim Fathers held as the first essential. To be 
scrupulously honest and just, to be industrious and 
intelligent, was their creed. Not unfrequently was 
there narrowness and hardness in this life. It was apt 
to be prosaic and colorless, but it was an eminently 
sure and safe foundation for the superstructure of the 
larger development that was to come. Francis and 
Hannah Stone were of this quality. Mr. Stone was a 
small farmer, prosperous in his activities and greatly 
respected by his neighbors. But he believed, with his 
generation, that the husband was the riglitly appointed 
ruler over his wife, and that education in the larger 
sense, while necessary for his sons, was quite superfluous 
for his daughters. The little Lucy was born to combat 
this. Almost from her cradle she exhibited that in- 
vincible resolution that characterized her womanhood. 
She was a vigorous, sturdy, uncompromising little 
maiden, a keen student, standing first in her classes at 
the country school, always industrious and active. 
Often, she has told us, she has driven the cows over the 
hills barefooted in the early dawn ere the starlight had 
paled before the sunrise, when the cold dew on the 



92 BOSTON DAYS 



grass made her sliiver ; yet always with that radiant 
sense of the beauty of the morning that was a part of 
a naturally poetic nature. The household life was one 
of toil. Her mother engaged in all the homely domestic 
labor, and the children were taught to lend a hand as 
an inevitable result of their conditions. Very early in 
her childhood Lucy Stone's ruling purpose began to 
assert itself She rebelled against the authority of her 
father over her mother, and being told it was the law, 
she said, in childish utterance, that such laws must be 
changed. Even then, however unconsciously, her 
destiny was upon her. Those whom the Lord hath 
anointed are sealed with His seal. 

When the young girl announced her intention to go 
to college, her father asked : " Is the child crazy ? " He 
would not — perhaps he could not — give her the 
money to go. But when did ever the lack of material 
aid stop in its progress a dauntless spirit? A noble 
purpose, like love, laughs at locksmiths. If a god 
wishes to ride, says Emerson, every chip and stem will 
bud and shoot out winged feet to carry him. In the 
case of Lucy Stone, a goddess wished to ride — and she 
rode. In our colloquial phrasing of the day she 
" arrived." Beginning in her early teens, Lucy Stone 
worked and saved until she was twenty-five years old 
before she had the little fund to enable her to start for 
Oberlin, the only college of the day tliat admitted 
women. How did she gain it ? Not by china paint- 
ing and music lessons. Instead, she earned money 
by picking berries and selling them to buy books ; 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 93 

she studied the books and became a district school 
teacher. And a most successful one she was ; still, being 
only a woman, she received only a fraction of the salary 
paid to men. The day came that this dauntless young 
woman started for Oberlin. Her scanty resources were 
too precious to afford comforts, and in crossing Lake 
Erie she slept with several other women on a pile of 
grain sacks on deck because staterooms were beyond 
their finances. It is a picture to be held in reverence 
by the younger women whose possibilities in life are so 
infinitely enlarged and uplifted because of the girl who 
picked berries to buy books and who slept on deck that 
she might journey to a college course. Can too much 
honor be given to that sublime courage that held its 
unfaltering view of the end, however hard and distaste- 
ful the means ? 

Here was an American heroine. Let us never cover 
from sight one homely detail of her privations and her 
sacrifices. That she did housework in the " Ladies' 
Boarding-hall" at Oberlin at three cents an hour ; that 
she cooked her own food in her room and lived — 
as she herself related the story — on fifty cents a 
week ; that she washed and ironed her clothes, and 
added to this teaching in the preparatory department, 
— let this ascendency of the higher powers over the 
lower never be concealed in any sketch of the life of 
Lucy Stone. Dante, in his exile and poverty, was not 
more noble in exaltation of spirit than this New Eng- 
land farmer's daughter in her quest for knowledge and 
intellectual resources. But, ah ! the outward poverty 



94 BOSTON DAYS 



and the inward riches ! The limitations in the material, 
the extensions into the spiritual ! Here was the young 
woman boarding herself at fifty cents a week and doing 
housework at three cents an hour, yet being able to 
donate her time and strength and services to teach a 
colored school for the many fugitive slaves whom Ober- 
lin, as a station of the " underground railroad," attracted. 
During this time she made her first public speech, and 
was remonstrated with by the wife of the President 
of Oberlin for doing what was unscriptural and un- 
womanly ! In 1847, at the age of twenty-nine, she 
graduated from Oberlin. At once she entered on what 
was to be the work of her life. After giving some lec- 
tures for " woman's rights," as the incipient movement 
was then known, she was engaged by the x4ntislaYery 
Society to speak. But the cause of women took prece- 
dence in her mind. Rev. Samuel J. May remonstrated, 
and she finally arranged to divide her lectures between 
the two causes. 

Volumes could be written regarding her early lecture 
experiences and the social conditions of the time. There 
was no demand for her theme. She had to overcome 
prejudice, break down barriers, create the demand for 
the lecture, and then meet it. 

She would go out to put up her own posters with a 
paper of tacks and a stone for a hammer. 

But the personality of Lucy Stone not only disarmed 
prejudice, but won all hearts. Her daughter, Alice 
Stone Blackwell, relates this incident : — 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 95 

" At one woman's rights meeting in New York the mob 
was making such a clamor that it was impossible for any 
speaker to be heard. One after another tried it, only to 
have his or her voice drowned forthwith by hoots and 
howls. William Henry Channing advised Lucretia Mott, 
who was presiding, to adjourn the meeting. Mrs. Mott 
answered, ' When the hour fixed for adjournment comes, 
I will adjourn the meeting; not before.' At last Lucy 
Stone was introduced. The mob became as quiet as a 
congregation of church-goers ; but as soon as the next 
speaker began, the howling recommenced, and it con- 
tinued to the end. At the close of the meeting, when 
the speakers went into the dressing-room to get their hats 
and cloaks, the mob surged in and surrounded them ; and 
Lucy Stone, who was brimming over with indignation, 
began to reproach them for their behavior. ' Oh, come,' 
they answered, ' you need n't say anything ; we kept 
still for you.' " 

In 1853 tlicre was a "hearing" before the legislature 
of Massachusetts for a petition for woman's rights, the 
first signature being that of Mrs. Alcott. Among the 
speakers were Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and 
Lucy Stone. Among the hearers was Henry B. Black- 
well. Already in sympathy with her speeches, he was 
charmed with the speaker. For tliree years he pressed 
his suit that she would be his wife, and at last was 
rewarded with success, although she had resolved 
never to marry, but to devote her life to her work. 
Her husband won her by the pledge and promise that 
she should find greater support in it through him. 
How perfectly that promise has been kept, the world 
knows. Truly the marriage of Henry B. Blackwell 



96 BOSTON DAYS 



and Lucy Stone was one that fulfilled the poet's ideal 

of being 

" yoked in all exercise of noble aims." 

In her home in West Brookfield, Mass., in 1855, 
they were married. Colonel Higginson, then an Unita- 
rian clergyman, performing the ceremony. It was mu- 
tually agreed that the bride should retain her own name 
and be known as Mrs. Lucy Stone. This was to her a 
matter of the ethics of individuality. 

Since then what is the story of their wedded life? 
It is that of a crescendo of personal happiness, of 
mutual work for humanity through the uplifting and 
advancement of women, of the ever-deepening honor 
and affection of friends and of society at large, of modest 
prosperity, and a wise and beautiful ordering of life. 
For a few years after their marriage they lived in 
Orange, N. J. There was born to them their only 
child, Alice Stone Blackwell, now a young woman 
whose literary genius and whose eloquence as a speaker 
is already widely recognized. Miss Blackwell is a poet 
and a scholar. She is a graduate of Boston University ; 
is now the editor of the " Woman's Journal," and is 
the most able and effective and brilliant of the younger 
women speakers in New England. 

The records of conventions and legislative movements 
in which Lucy Stone was so important a factor have 
recorded themselves in national history. More than 
thirty years ago Lucy Stone, William Lloyd Gar- 
rison, Julia Ward Howe, George William Curtis, 
Colonel Higginson, and others, organized the American 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 97 

Woman's Suffrage Association. Its work is well known 
to all. 

The home of Lucy Stone and Henry B. JSlackwell, 
on the seashore in Dorchester, a beautiful suburb 
of Boston, is a large white house with charming grounds. 
It faces the south, looking out on the dreamy blue 
of the Milton hills, which Mrs. Stone always called 
" my little blue hills." On the east is the sea, with 
the picturesque curve of Squantum thrown far out in 
the restless water. Entering the house there is on the 
right a large drawing-room with its grand piano, and 
on the left the library, its centre-table always littered 
with late books and periodicals, and its beautiful 
" sunset window," where the glories of the changeful 
western sky gleam through the flowering shrubs and 
trees. Above, Mrs. Stone's own room was that whose 
eastern windows looked over the sea, and from 
the south took in the entire range of her " little blue 
hills." With nothing for show or mere luxury about 
the house, it is the ideal home of comfort, of peace, of 
sunny sweetness. The hospitality was simple and cor- 
dial ; it was especially extended to those most in need 
of its comforting. Over young women alone in the city 
Lucy Stone's heart especially yearned. To them went 
her first invitation to her Thanksgiving or her Christmas 
dinner ; for them her carriage was sent to meet them at 
the station. Not those in whose society she might, 
perhaps, find most of intellectual enjoyment, but those 
to whom her kindness and her hospitable home could 
give pleasure, was her first thought. If ever the life of 

7 



98 BOSTON DAYS 



the true follower of Christ were lived, it was lived by 
Lucy Stone. Professing no specific creed, she practised 
the divine life. The church affiliation of the Blackwells 
was with that of James Freeman Clarke, now succeeded 
by Rev. Dr. Ames, whose personal holiness and rare 
eloquence as a preacher make the deepest impression 
on the Boston days of the present. 

Up to the last months of her life INIrs. Stone knew 
little abatement of its activities. Her blue eyes kept 
their luminous clearness ; her fair cheek its hint of 
apple bloom ; her brown hair was scarcely silvered 
under the delicate lace cap that rested lightly over it. 
The wonderful sweetness of her voice always had an 
irresistible power. Her presence on the platform was 
magnetic in its serene and potent attraction. 

Lucy Stone was a remarkable combination of strength, 
sweetness, serenity, and sunshine. She had tlie tem- 
perament of exhilaration. She never lost her youtli. 
She was never careworn or sad or depressed, because 
she always looked beyond. Her tenderness was as 
inexhaustible as her faith ; her sweetness as infinite as 
her strength. She had a mind of the most remarkable 
clearness and of logical power. " Lucy Stone would 
have made a great lawyer," once said Murat Halstcad 
of her. She could hold any argument, always with 
invincible strength and firmness, but always with that 
same marvellously serene sweetness. Slie was the 
very embodied spirit of the morning, the Prophetess of 
the New Day. 

And always was there with her that deep tenderness 



THE CITY OF BEAUTIFUL IDEALS 99 

and solicitude for the comfort of others. " Are you 
dressed warmly enough ? " might be her salutation on 
a cold day. Never of herself, always of others was her 
thought. She was royal by nature. Well might the 
poet have said of her : — 

" She doeth little kindnesses, 
Which most leave undone, or despise. 
For naught that sets one heart at ease, 
Or giveth happiness or peace, 
Is low-esteemed in her eyes." 

Never did there fade from her face that trustful, 
happy, uplifted look. It was always — 

" A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

Lucy Stone has left to us the heritage of a singularly 
noble character. The world is the fairer that she has 
lived in it. There were none of the ordinary associa- 
tions of death when this radiant and prophetic spirit 
put on immortality. We thought of her only as entering 
into the life more abundant and gaining the use of still 
greater powers than those she so nobly exercised here. 
She has left the world better than she found it. What 
greater tribute can be paid ? Life is made possible to 
all by the greatness of the few. The degree in which 
this greatness is shown depends solely on the spiritual 
quality of the individual, and not in the least degree 
upon rank or circumstances. The world's greatest 
benefactors have been her prophets and her poets. It 
is ideas and ideals that are of value. It is not posses- 
L.ofC. 



100 BOSTON DAYS 



sions, but thought, that can relate its power to the 
needs of humanity, and the sublimest gift to man was 
given by One who had not where to lay his head. 
And His gift was for all time, and is so beyond price 
that it is forever free to the poorest. 

The Boston grouping at this time is one of historic 
interest. There were the special students and thinkers, 
— Alcott, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Elizabeth Peabody, 
Theodore Parker, James Freeman Clarke, Dr. Hedge, 
Mrs. Caroline Ball, who also affiliated with every noble 
effort in the service of humanity and with the literary 
interests of the day as well as with their special 
research and study in metaphysics and philosophy ; and 
there was Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, " the Cadmus of 
the Blind," as Whittier called him ; Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale, then a young clergyman ; Hawthorne, held spell- 
bound under the magic of I'omance ; Edwin Percy Whip- 
ple, the most sympathetic of friends and critics ; James 
T. Fields, who at the head of a liberal publishing house 
was doing so much toward making the best foreign 
literature accessible on this side. Thackeray came and 
lectured, and was hospitably entertained by Mr. Fields 
and Mr. Longfellow ; Jenny Lind charmed the city with 
her lyric art ; Rachel appeared, offering a new revelation 
of dramatic interpretation, and the great forces of art 
and thought were a condition of radiant energy. It was 
a most remarkable period, and one which is almost 
without parallel since the golden days of Pericles. 



II 

CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 



For Joy and Beauty planted it, 
With faery gardens cheered, 

And boding fancy haunted it 
With men and women weird. 

Emerson. 




CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 

Behind thee leave thy merchandise, 
Thy churches and thy charities ; 
And leave thy peacock wit behind ; 
Enough for thee the primal mind 
That flows in streams, that breathes in wind 
Leave all thy pedant lore apart ; 
God hid the whole world in thy heart. 
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, 
Gives all to them who all renounce. 

Emerson. 

PHE Concord idyl is the most classic chapter 
in American history. The New England 
town lying in its quiet beauty on a placid 
river, amid pine-clad hills, has become the shrine of 
literary pilgrimage, invested with a mystic atmosphere 
of poetic beauty and consecration which binds the 
most casual comer to maintain the honor of the place. 
In the amber lights of an autumn day it is a golden 
dream, under the embowering yellow maples, shot 
through with scarlet gleams, under which one saunters 
conscious of presences unseen, of voices that fall on no 
mortal ear, of a " diviner Silence " in which dwell those 

who 

" far beyond our vision and our hail 

Are heard forever, and are seen no more." 

One treads the winding way as a via sacra and sees 



104. BOSTON DAYS 



" in every star's august serenity 
And in the rapture of the flaming rose" 

some subtle trace of vanished touch and tone. Ah, 
how profoundly does one feel the truth of the lines: 

" Empires dissolve and peoples disappear ; 
Song passes not away. 
Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, 
And kings a dubious legend of their reign ; 
The swords of Caesars, they are less than rust ; 
The poet doth remain." 

The Concord seer who crowned our days " with flower 
of perfect speech ; " the greatest of American romancists 
who left his " unfinished window in Aladdin's tower ; " 
the speculative philosopher whom Lowell compared to 
the Phidian Jove — Emerson, Hawthorne, and Alcott 
— form an immortal trio inseparably connected with 
Concord. Here was the scene of their life and work in 
their more essential phases ; and here, on the crest of the 
hill overlooking Sleepy Hollow, lie buried all that was 
mortal of those who have left on life and literature a 
permanent impress. 

But the group around these three central figures 
was itself remarkable, — Thoreau, Frank B. Sanborn, 
William Henry Channing, whom ]\Ir. and Mrs. Sanborn 
took into their home and cherished through life as a 
brother ; Louisa Alcott, Samuel Hoar ; and the friends 
who came and went in the Emerson, Hawthorne, and 
Alcott households enjoying hours of the most ideal 
social intercourse because it was an intercourse based 
on spiritual gravitation. Thoreau, who graduated from 



CONCORD, ASl) JTS FAMOUS AUTHORS 105 

Harvard in 1837, " witfiout any literary distinction," 
as Emerson records ; stoic and recluse, betook himself 
in 1845 to the shores of Lake Walden, where for two 
years he lived the life of solitary labor and study, ex- 
changing^ his hermit's hut for a brief residence in the 
town jail, because he refused to pay his taxes, from 
which he was released by a friend who paid them for 
him. He was never disturbed by outward things, 
which, he said, respect the devout mind, and he claimed 
that " a mental ecstasy is never interrupted." Emerson 
notes that the biography of Thoreau is found in his 
verses, — as in this stanza : — 

" I hearing get, who had. but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before ; 
I moments live, who lived but years, 
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore." 

It is Emerson who most truly recognized the inner life 
of this strange being, and who sums up all Thoreau's 
character in the words : — 

" His soul was made for the noblest society ; he had 
in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world ; 
wherever there is knowlerlge, wherever there is virtue, 
wherever there is beauty, he will find a home." 

The homes and haunts of Emerson, Alcott, Haw- 
thorne, and Thoreau offer an objective point for as classic 
a pilgrimage as can be found in the region of the lake 
poets of England, or to the heath where the witches 
appeared to Macbeth, to that street in Florence on 
which stands Dante's house, or to Casa Guidi, which 



106 BOSTON DAYS 



was so long the home of the Brownings. Emerson 
was one of the few greatest spirits that have ever come 
into this world, bringing a message of the higher possi- 
bilities of life ; and even yet we stand too near fully to 
recognize his supreme power as a spiritual seer. 
Alcott was an exceptional individuality in his absolute 
nobility of thought; Hawthorne the greatest magician 
in prose romance ; Thoreau, unique, unworldly, and 
illustrating in his life the wide distinction between the 
things that are significant and' insignificant ; Louisa 
Alcott, a woman whose greatness of character excelled 
even her literary fame : and the circle that these great 
spirits drew about them will forever remain an impres- 
sive one in literary history. 

The town' of Concord is unparalleled by any other in 
America. It has the distinctive New England flavor, 
as a matter of course ; but beyond this there is more. 
The stamp of high intelligence and refinement Concord 
shares with many another town of New England, and, 
indeed, of an entire country ; but there is a special recog- 
nition among its residents of what one may perhaps not 
inaptly designate as the consecration in the air, — the 
heritage left by the high spirits that have vanished from 
mortal eye. " After all, it is the fine souls that serve 
us, and not what we may call fine society," truly said 
Emerson ; and if one falls inadvertently into a bit of 
transcendental dialect and refers to Concord as a town 
of " fine souls " the reader will readily pardon him. 

Although the most famous of the townspeople have 
passed on to the life beyond this, there still remain 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 107 

noted leaders, and a most refined and cultured circle of 
people. The name of Mr. Frank B. Sanborn, a wit, 
poet, and scholar and distinguished as a social scientist, 
author, reformer, and philanthropist, readily recurs to 
all in connection with Concord, as does the name of 
that supremely gifted genius, Daniel French, the artist 
whose great work entitled " Death and the Sculptor " 
was regarded as the finest piece of sculpture shown at 
the Columbian Exposition. 

The beautiful free library of the town, whose annual 
circulation averages over 23,000, among a population 
of 3,000, attracts the visitor, and within he will find the 
portrait of Emerson, painted by David Scott in Edin- 
burgh in 1848; Raphael Mengs' copy of Titian's 
Columbus ; Marshall's copy of Stuart's Washington ; 
a bust of Hawthorne ; French's busts of Emerson, 
Alcott, and Miss Alcott ; Gould's bust of Emerson ; 
SchofTs engraving, Rouse's crayon portrait of Emerson, — 
the finest likeness of him ; a bust of Plato, and Dexter's 
bust of Agassiz; a landscape by Edward Simmons, 
who was a native of Concord ; a bust of Horace Mann, 
and other works of artistic interest and local association. 
Loitering along the long street, one passes the former 
residence of Hon, Samuel Hoar, where his son, Judge 
Hoar, was born, and who died in Concord in 1856. 
The house is now in possession of the third generation 
of the family. It was the daughter of the elder Hoar, 
Elizabeth, who was the betrothed of Emerson's tenderly 
beloved brother, Charles, who died in 1836, and of 
whom Emerson wrote to his wife : — 



108 BOSTON DAYS 



" A soul is gone, so costly and so rare that few persons 
were capable of knowing its price. In losing him I 
have lost my all, for he was born an orator and a 
writer." 

The little shops along the street in Concord all 
placard their windows with photographs and views 
of the local celebrities and noted places. No stranger 
could fail to realize how all-pervading is the pride and 
sympathy of the town in the great spirits that have left 
it their heritage of fame. 

From Monument Square at the east end several roads 
diverge, — one running past the " Old Manse " to the 
bridge and the statue of the Minute Man, where was 
fired " the shot heard round the world ; " on another, 
one comes to the home of Emerson and goes on to the 
" Orchard House," where Alcott lived, and on whose 
grounds stands the little hillside chapel where the 
"School of Philosophy " was held from 1878 to 1886. 

The approach to the " Old Manse " is through a 
sombre avenue which was originally of the black ash- 
trees, but these dying, it has mostly been filled in with 
maples. Two high posts of granite frown upon the 
outer entrance. On the hill which rises between the 
" Old Manse " and the village, is a single poplar-tree out- 
lined against the sky. The Manse was built in 1/65 for 
Rev. William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo. 
He married Phoebe Bliss. His early death left her a 
widow at the age of thirty-nine, with a group of little 
children, and she soon became the wife of Dr. Ezra 
Ripley, a man nine years her junior, who succeeded 



^^'M 



i % ,J•.l"■^.^^^■. 










CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 109 

Mr. Emerson as iniiiister of the parish. Dr. Ripley, who 
was a character in his day, planted the orchard that still 
stands sloping down to the river. He often discovered 
large providences in small events. Purchasing a 
" shay," he recorded the fact in his diary, and added : 
" The Lord grant it may be a comfort and blessing to 
my family." On their all being overturned in it, he 
records : " I desire that the Lord would teach me suit- 
ably to repent this Providence, to make suitable re- 
marks on it, and to be suitably affected by it." His 
long prayer usually included meteorological appeals, 
and he especially petitioned against lightning, that it 
might not "lick up our spirits." He was a just and 
good man, officially severe, as became the times, and 
most tenderly sympathetic in his own nature. The 
" Old Manse " has sheltered, at one time and another, 
nearly all the noted divines of New England ; and the 
chamber where they slept is still known as the " saints' 
rest." Its walls are covered with inscriptions. The 
study is kept just as it was one hundred years ago, and 
it is said that still at the dead of night unseen hands 
lift the latch and currents of cold air rush in. 

Emerson was the enchanter whose magic, like that of 
Merlin, cast its spell on the atmosphere. "He was 
surrounded by men who ran to extremes in their idio- 
syncrasies," said Dr. Holmes : " Alcott in speculations 
which often led him into the fourth dimension of men- 
tal space ; Hawthorne, who brooded himself into a 
dream-peopled solitude ; Thoreau, the nullifier of civili- 
zation, who insisted on nibbling his asparagus at the 



no BOSTON DAYS 



wrong end, to say nothing of idolaters and echoes. He 
kept his bahuice among all." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, on Sum- 
mer Street, now in tlie heart of business thoroughfares, 
on May 26, 1803, and any reference to him cannot but 
invite meditation . on the spiritual seer and the poet 
whose influence only deepens and increases as the years 
go by and as humanity progresses to higher planes. 
The appreciation of Emerson is not limited to any cult : 
he is more universal even than Goethe ; and while he is 
the delight of the scholar and of the saint, he is no less 
the delight, the iuspirer, of the enthusiasm of youth, of 
the man of culture and gifts, or of those whose life is 
largely given to toil, or hampered by trial or privation. 
Indeed, it is to these that he is all-essential. For it is 
Emerson who is supremely, out of all the entire world 
of authors, "the friend aiid aider of all who would 
live in the spirit." Emerson is a poet for poets ; he is 
the seer, the diviner, the prophet ; he is the most re- 
markable spiritual teacher of this century. There could 
hardly be to-day any subject so profitable to engage the 
general attention as that of his life, his influence, and 
the illumination on the problems of existence which he 
has contributed to the world. 

In 1G34 the Rev. Peter Bulkeley, rector of Wood- 
hill and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, came 
to this country from England, and was one of the 
founders of the present town of Concord, Mass. His 
granddaughter, Elizabeth Bulkeley, married Rev. Joseph 
Emersou. Their son married Rebecca Waldo, aud 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 111 

they had a son, Joseph, who also became a minister 
and who married Phoebe Bliss. Rev. Joseph Emerson 
was pastor of the Unitarian Church in Concord, and he 
lived in the " Old Manse." The famous Mary Moody 
Emerson — the aunt to whom Ralph Waldo Emerson 
owed so much — was a daughter of Rev. Joseph and 
Phoebe (Bliss) Emerson, and among their other children 
was William, who became a minister and married Ruth 
Haskins. The Rev. William and Ruth (Haskins) 
Emerson were the parents of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
His grandfather, Rev. Joseph Emerson, died at the 
age of thirty- three. He was the man who used to 
pray every night that none of his descendants might 
ever be rich. He was a classical scholar, a devoted 
lover of the Iliad, and he ruined his health by his devo- 
tion to study. After his death Mrs. Emerson became 
the wife of Dr. Ezra Ripley, — her husband's successor 
as pastor of the church, who was nine years her 
junior. 

Rev. William Emerson recorded in his diary that in 
June of 1796 he " rode out with the pious and amiable 
Ruth Haskins, and conversed with her on the subject 
of matrimony," — apparently to good purpose, as they 
were married in +he following October. 

After this marriage he records in his diary : — 

' ' We are poor and cold, and have little meal and little 
wood, but, thank God, courage enough. In 1799 he was 
invited to be the pastor of the First Church in Boston, and 
the emoluments of his pastorate were fixed at $14 a week ; 
also the parish dwelling-house and twenty cords of wood." 



112 BOSTON DAYS 



He died at the age of forty-two, in May, 1811, leav- 
ing his young wife with six children, of whom Ralph 
Waldo, born in May, 1803, was the third, and all were 
under ten years of age. 

The " pious and amiable Ruth," left a widow with 
her family of children, was constantly assisted and 
invigorated by the care and help of Mary Moody 
Emerson, the sister of her husband, who took a lively 
interest in the little flock. " Educated, " she exclaimed ; 
" they were born to be educated ! " There was a new 
family of the little Ripleys, and Mary Moody had been 
taken by her grandmother in Maiden. Here she had 
grown up and lived, and only occasionally saw her 
mother and her little half-brothers and sisters, who lived 
on in the " Old Manse " at Concord. 

She was the most unique character of her time, and 
the curious story of her life must always stand out as 
a marked chapter in New England biography. In a 
letter written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his early 
life, referring to his aunt, he says : — 

"Give my love to her, — -love and honor. She must 
always occupy a saint's place in my household ; and I 
have no hours of poetry and philosophy since I knew 
these things, into which she does not enter as a genius." 

Mary Moody Emerson was born in Concord in 1774, 
and died (in 1863) on Long Island. She was born 
just before the opening of the Revolution. Her father 
was the minister of Concord, and as a chaplain went to 
Ticonderoga where he died. His wife married again. 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 113 

and Mary was reared by her grandmother in Maiden, 
Mass. The second husband of Mrs. Emerson was 
Dr. Ezra Ripley, as before noted, and a new family 
of children sprang up. In the old farmhouse at 
Maiden, Mary Moody Emerson lived a varied and 
curious life. " What a subject is her life and mind for 
the finest novel ! " her illustrious nephew has said of her. 
From her journal, under date of November, 1805, we 
learn that she " rose before light ; visited from necessity 
once, and once for books ; read Butler's ' Analogy/ 
Cicero's ' Letters,' — a few ; washed, carded, cleaned 
house, and baked." " There is a sweet pleasure," she 
says, " in bending to circumstances while superior to 
them." 

Emerson, writing of her, said : — 

"Her early reading was Milton, Young, Akenside, 
Samuel Clarke, Jonathan Edwards, and always the 
Bible. Later, Plato, Plotinus, Marcus Antoninus, 
Stewart, Coleridge, Cousin, Herder, Locke, Madame de 
Stael, Channing, Mackintosh, Byron. Nobody can read 
in her manuscript, or recall the conversation of old-school 
people, without seeing that Milton and Young had a 
religious authority in their mind, and nowise the slight, 
merely entertaining quality of modern bards. And 
Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, — how venerable and organic 
as Nature they are in her mind! What a subject is her 
mind and life for the finest novel ! When I read Dante, 
the other day, and his paraphrases to signify with more 
adequateness Christ or Jehovah, whom do you think I 
was reminded of? Whom but Mary Emerson and her 
eloquent theology? She had a deep sympathy with 

8 



114 BOSTON DAYS 



genius. When it was unhallowed, as in Byrou, she had 
none the less, whilst she deplored and affected to de- 
nounce him. But she adored it when ennobled by char- 
acter. She liked to notice that the greatest geniuses 
have died ignorant of their power and influence. She 
wished you to scorn to shine. 

" For years she had her bed made in the form of a 
coffin, and delighted herself with the discovery of the 
figure of a coffin made every evening on their sidewalk 
by the shadow of a church tower which adjoined the house, 

" Saladin caused his shroud to be made, and carried it 
to battle as his standard. She made up her shroud, 
and death still refusing to come, and she thinking it a 
pity to let it lie idle, wore it as a night-gown, or a day- 
gown, nay, went out to ride in it, on horseback, in her 
mountain roads, until it was worn out. Then she had 
another made up, and as she never travelled without 
being provided for this dear and indispensable contin- 
gency, I believe she wore out a great many." 

A more extraordinary character was never known than 
Mary Moody Emerson. Yet she had the quality of 
greatness, — vast mental capacity and resources, spir- 
itual fervor, perpetual aspiration. With these went the 
constant conflict with circumstances, the constant and 
triumphant assertion also of the potency of spirit over 
the temporary vexations of the material world. 

On the low stone that marks her grave in the Emer- 
son lot in Sleepy Hollow are the lines : — 

" She gave high counsels. It was the privilege of cer- 
tain boys to have this unmeasurably high standard indi- 
cated to their childhood, a blessing which nothing else in 
education could supply." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 115 

This eccentric aunt of Emerson's was, nevertlieless, 
one of the strongest formative influences in his life. 

The three brothers, Edward, Charles, and Ralph 
Waldo, went to the Latin School and later to Har- 
vard. At the time Emerson entered Harvard (1817) 
George Ticknor was professor of modern languages 
and Edward Everett of Greek. The president was 
Dr. Kirkland. Emerson was chosen poet for Class 
Day, but while his standing as a student was fair, 
it was in no wise distinguished. Josiah Quincy, 
his classmate, has said of him that he "gave no 
sign of the power that was fashioning itself for 
leadership in a new time." Later he taught school, 
went to Europe for a year, entered the ministry, and 
finally resigned his charge, as he could not conscien- 
tiously administer the Lord's Supper. In September of 
1829 he married Ellen Louise Tucker, who only lived 
three years. In 1835 he married Miss Lydia Jackson, 
of Plymouth, and on her marriage induced her to write 
her name Lidian, as more euphonious with Emerson. 
Miss Jackson was, at the time of her marriage to the 
poet, a woman thirty-three years of age, keenly intelli- 
gent and cultivated, and with exceeding sweetness of 
nature. She owned her residence — the " old Winslow 
house," as it was called — and proposed that they should 
make that their home, but Emerson was charmed by 
Concord. Before their marriage he wrote her, saying : 

" I must win you to love Concord. I am born a poet, — 
of a low class without doubt, yet a poet. That is my 
nature and vocation. My singing, to be sure, is very 



116 BOSTON DAYS 



husky, and for the most part in prose. Still I am a poet 
in the sense of a perceiver and dear lover of the harmo- 
nies that are in soul and in matter, and especially of the 
correspondences between these and those. A sunset, a 
forest, a snow-storm, a certain river-view, are more to me 
than many friends, and do ordinarily divide my day with 
my books. Wherever I go, therefore, I guard and study 
my rambling propensities. Now Concord is only one of 
a hundred towns in which I could find these necessary 
objects, but Plymouth, I fear, is not one. Plymouth is 
streets." 

It would have seemed as if the sea and Plymouth 
woods might have appealed more to Emerson's poetic 
sense than an inland village like Concord, quietly pic- 
turesque as it is ; but they did not. He loved this quiet 
town and he bought a home on the Lexington road 
known as the " Coolidge house," where in September 
of 1835 the wedded couple set up their household gods. 
They had four children, — Waldo, Ellen, Edward, and 
Edith, Waldo died in childhood, and it is for him that 
Emerson's poem, " Threnody," was written, Edward 
Emerson studied medicine, but of late years devotes 
himself to art. Edith married a wealthy and prominent 
man, Mr, Forbes, of Milton, Mass., and one of her 
children, a daughter, has a talent for sculpture and has 
studied under Mr. William Ordway Partridge. JNliss 
Ellen Emerson has never married, and she occupies 
their home in Concord, and is the idolized figure in the 
entire village. 

On the death of his brother Charles, Emerson wrote 
to his wife : — 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 117 

" And so, Lidian, I can never bring you back my noble 
friend, who was my ornament, my wisdom, and my pride. 
A soul is gone so costly and so rare that few persons were 
capable of knowing its price, and I sliall have my sorrow 
to myself, for if I speak of him I shall be thought a fond 
exaggerator. He had the four-fold perfection of good 
sense, of genius, of grace, and a virtue as I have never 
seen them combined. . . . And you must be content 
henceforth with only a piece of your husband, for the best 
of his strength lay in the soul with which he must no more 
on earth take counsel." 

To Margaret Fuller he wrote of Alcott, saying : — 

" He has more of the godlike than any man I have ever 
seen, and his presence rebukes and threatens and raises. 
I shall dismiss for the future all anxiety about his success. 
If he cannot make intelligent men feel the presence of a 
superior nature, the worse for them. I can never doubt 
him. His ideal is beheld with such unrivalled distinctness 
that he is not only justified, but necessitation to condemn 
and to seek to approve the vast actual and cleanse the 
world. . . . The most extraordinary man and the highest 
genius of his time. He ought to go publishing through 
the land his gospel, like them of old time. Wonderful is 
the steadiness of his \ision. ... It were too much to say 
that the Platonic world I might have learned to treat as 
cloudlaud had I not known Alcott, who is a native of that 
country. Yet I will say that he makes it as solid as 
Massachusetts to me." 

Under date of August, 1836, Emerson writes to one 
of his brothers : — 

"Mr. Alcott has spent a day here lately, — the character- 
builder. An accomplished lady is stayiug with Lidian, — 



118 BOSTON DAYS 



Miss Margaret Fuller. She is quite an extraordinai'y per- 
son for her apprehensiveness, her acquisitions, and her 
power of conversation." 

From the first Mr. Alcott made an impression on 
Emerson that only deepened with time. Alcott was 
four years his senior. " That godlike man/' Emerson 
called him from the first, and " the highest genius of 
his time." He asserts that Mr. Alcott "makes the 
Platonic world as solid as Massachusetts to me." 

Of Emerson's habits in his early married life, James 
Eliot Cabot writes : — 

" The morning was his time for work, and he guarded it 
from all disturbances. He rose early and went to his 
study, where he remained until 1 o'clock, when, partaking 
of the mid-day dinner, he went to walk. In the evening 
he was with his family, and he never worked late, think- 
ing sleep to be a prime necessity." 

The record of Mr. Emerson's life is almost exclusively 
that of a spiritual biography. Not that he failed of 
being in real relations witli humanity ; he was pre- 
eminently in these right relations, and his life as a son, 
brother, husband, father, friend, neighbor, and citizen 
rang true at every touch. He was faithful, tender, 
noble, and loyal. But it was the soul's journey through 
the universe that interested him, and he read the eter- 
nities and not the times. Like Emily Dickinson he 
could have declared, — 

" The only news I know 
Is bulletins all day 
Fi-Qui Immortality." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 119 

His lofty spirituality was conjoined, however, with 
what the world agrees iu calling the practical quali- 
ties. It is true that nothing is so " practical " as 
spirituality of life, for when it does not give greater 
tenderness, greater thought, greater consideration for 
family, friends, and humanity in general, it is not the 
highest spirituality at all. In the true sense of the 
term practical, no one was ever more so than Jesus, 
the Christ. To comfort the sorrowing, to heal the sick, 
to inspire all into the radiant hopes of the higher life 
and the infinite achievement possible to the soul, — 
is a very practical work. 

Mr. Emerson made in all three journeys to Europe, — 
one in his early life and two in later years. By means 
of these his circle of friends was still further enlarged, and 
the friendship and correspondence between himself and 
Carlyle is well known. Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, of 
Harvard, edited the two large volumes of the correspond- 
ence of Carlyle and Emerson, as will be remembered, — 
a work which is one of the monumental contributions 
to the literature of this century, and which Matthew 
Arnold characterized as " the best memorial of Carlyle 
which exists." 

From his early life up to about 1878 Emerson lectured 
largely in New England, but somewhat widely, too, 
in the West. It could hardly be said that he was 
a popular lecturer in the sense in which it was said of 
Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, and Anna 
Dickinson, but he was the most wiiming personality of 
them all ; and if his lectures appealed only to the 



120 BOSTON DAYS 



higher order of responsive thought, that order was by 
no means lacking, whether in a country town in the 
West, or in the New England metropolis. The Eastern 
people who are not familiar with the West or the South 
do not realize the intense intellectual vitality of the 
country and the country towns, — the noble and beau- 
tiful aspirations of the young people. They consti- 
tute a public which those familiar with it appreciate 
truly. 

Mr. Emerson had a certain fine and persistent instinct 
of fitness, if one may call it so, that would never have 
allowed him to be in debt, — to be in any undignified 
position. Poverty and privation companioned his early 
life, but it was always the poverty that is borne with 
dignity and that had the solace of high thought. One 
may accept the deprivation of fashionable society if he 
have the company of the gods. 

In the town of Concord Emerson was the most be- 
loved citizen. He was always a working factor in 
town meetings and organizations, actively interested in 
the schools, the local government, the social and moral 
progresSo He was never a recluse in the sense of being 
indifferent to whatever made for the welfare of the 
])cople. He loved his friends and neighbors, and was 
beloved, — adored, indeed, by them. 

And a goodly company, indeed, they were. Hon. 
Samuel Hoar was a noble man, whose life and influence 
contributed measurably to elevate the standard of 
living. He was born in Lincoln (near Concord) in 
May, 1778, and died in Concord, Nov. 2, 1856. He is 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 121 

buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, and on his tomb is 
a design of a window with the words : — 

" The pilgrim they laid in a chamber 
Whose window opened toward the sunrising. 
The name of the chamber was Peace ; 
There he lay till break of day and then he arose and sang." 

Besides this quotation from the " Pilgrim's Progress " 
there is a long inscription, of which some lines are : 

"He was long one of the most eminent lawyers and 
best beloved citizens of Massachusetts, — a safe coun- 
sellor, a kind neighbor, a Christian gentleman. He had 
a dignity that commanded the respect and a sweetness and 
modesty that won the affection of all men. He practised 
an economy that never wasted, and a liberality that never 
spared. Of capacity for the highest offices, he never 
avoided obscure duties. He never sought station of 
fame or emolument, and never shrank from positions of 
danger or obloquy. His days were made happy by public 
esteem and private affection, . . . and he met death 
with the perfect assurance of immortal life." 

Elizabeth Hoar, his daughter, the betrothed of Charles 
Emerson, was always regarded by Emerson as a sister, 
and his mother, Madame Emerson (the '^ pious and 
amiable " Ruth Haskins), who lived in his family, and 
died in the fifties, always looked upon Miss Hoar as a 
daughter. Elizabeth Hoar died in 1878, having lived 
to be sixty-three years of age. Samuel Hoar married a 
daughter of Roger Sherman. Judge E. R. Hoar, whose 
death occurred a decade ago, was their son, as is 
also the present Senator Hoar. Besides the Hoar 



122 BOSTON DAYS 



family, the Emersous, the Hawthornes, the Alcotts, 
Thoreau, and Mr. and Mrs. Frank B. Sanborn made up 
a remarkable circle. Such a group of residents of course 
drew visitors of note, and thus for nearly half a century 
Concord has been the scene of literary pilgrimage. 
Margaret Fuller frequently visited at the Emersons. 
Elizabeth Peabody was a familiar guest, as were the 
Whipples, Mrs. Howe, James Freeman Clarke, and Dr. 
Hedge. 

In those days now forever vanished from all save 
memory, Emerson, Alcott, Dr. Hedge, and Dr. Bartol 
formed a club of their own, — an alliance defensive, 
though not offensive, and exclusive of all other varieties 
of meetings or gatherings. They met at stated times 
for one hour, and when that was told the four 
philosophers went each his own way. That they might 
escape the interruptions of a rude and unfeeling world, 
whose noise and bustle would jar upon the lofty medi- 
tations of the transcendental mind, they met in Miss 
Bartol's studio, which had been evolved from a former 
stable, in the rear of her father's old" Boston house, on 
Chestnut Street. Here, however often the doorbell of 
the house of Bartol might ring, it could not disturb the 
serenity of the great men. Of this quartet two are so 
well known as to require no comment. The names of 
Emerson and Alcott are as immortally linked as those 
of Goethe and Schiller. Dr. Hedge was the con- 
temporary and warm friend of James Freeman Clarke 
and of Margaret Fnller. He lived on into a great 
age, dying during this last decade, at the age of 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 123 

over fourscore. His house was in Cambridge and his 
specialty was German metaphysics. It was in his early 
youth that the craze of German enthusiasm swept over 
Boston, and found its most devoted disciples in Mr. 
Hedge, Mr. Clarke, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth 
Peabody. At that time Miss Peabody opened a book 
store in the front room of her father's house on West 
Street, for foreign books and periodicals, as they were 
unable otherwise to procure their German lore. This 
shop became a sort of library clubroom, and it was 
here, as noted, that James Freeman Clarke first dis- 
cussed his idea of founding the church to which he gave 
the name of the Church of the Disciples. Dr. Hedge 
graduated at Harvard and fared forth to visit Goethe, 
on his subsequent tour to Europe, with letters of in- 
troduction to the great poet as before noted, and he re- 
turned to still further fan the flame of enthusiasm for 
Goethe's language and literature. He became eminent 
as a translator, as well as a philosophical essayist ; and 
it is traditionally told that his intellectual force so im- 
pressed its superiority on the Harvard undergraduates 
of the day that he was appreciatively (if irreverently) 
known to them as " Old Brains." 

Dr. Holmes knew Emerson well, and despite the 
" oflicial " authority of Mr. James Eliot Cabot's life of 
Emerson, the biography written by Dr. Holmes has 
infinitely more vitality, color, and power of communi- 
cating the essential personality of Emerson. In a letter 
(dated Oct. 9, 1894) to Miss Ellen Emerson, Dr. Holmes 
writes : — 



124 BOSTON DAYS 



". . . lu a generation or two your father will be an 
ideal, tending to become as mystical as Buddha, but for 
these human circumstances which show that he was a 
man. . . . It will delight so many people to know these 
lesser circumstances of a great life that I can hardly bear 
to lose sight of any of them." 

This reveals the more sympathetic and related spirit 
in which Dr. Holmes wrote the biography of Emerson. 
The life of Mr. Cabot has the essential claims, too, but, 
at all events, no lover of Emerson can afford to miss the 
racy, keen-sighted, vital, and charming interpretation 
given by Dr. Holmes. 

Emerson's personality radiated strength and courage. 
Margaret Fuller thus expressed her recognition of 
him : — 

"When I look forward to eternal growth I am always 
aware that I am far larger and deeper for him. His 
influence has been to me that of lofty assurance and sweet 
serenity. I present to him the many forms of nature and 
solicit them with music ; he melts them all into spirit and 
reproves performance with prayer." 

To Mr. Whipple, who was at one time preparing an 
article on Emerson for an encyclopaedia, he wrote : — 

Concord, April 22, 1859. 
Dear Whipple, — I have with too much pains notched 
out my calendar of two little events, but as I had begun to 
fix the year of each work, thought I would wade through. 
What is curious I have omitted ; namely, that by paternal 
or maternal lines I am the eighth consecutive clergyman. 
Othei'wise, for eight generations we are a consecutive line 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 125 

of clergymen on one or the other side, reaching back to 
Peter Bulkley, the founder of Concord, who is my ances- 
tor. Was it not time I should vote for the necessity of 
change? The rest of all this detail is for your article, 
but I thought you should have it in manuscript for public 
reference. Make the shortest article, for I grudge you 
here to the cyclopedia, which I have not looked into, but 
believe is to have nothing good but what you and Lowell 
have put into it. I gave you already the ground of my 
life. Yours ever, 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

About this time Mr. Emerson vrrote again to Mr. 

Whipple : — 

Concord, April 18. 

Dear Whipple, — I am too well pleased to know that 
I have fallen into your good hands, and I took up my pen 
on Saturday to tell you so when I was called away per- 
emptorily. I did not return home in time for the mail. 
In ten or twelve days I will attend to the matter of dates, 
and will make out a list of such as I may think you may 
want with all the gravity which the occupation demands. 
Ever yours, 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Emerson as a poet is less known than as an essayist. 
But to those who revel in the latter an ever deeper joy 
is found in his poetry. The profoundest spiritual mean- 
ing pervades his poems as the fragrance pervades the 
rose. Take these lines : — 

'• Draw the breath of Eternity. 
Serve thou it not for daily bread, — 
Serve it for pain and fear and need. 



126 BOSTON DAYS 



Love it, though it hide its light ; 
By love behold the sun at night. 
If the law shall thee forget, 
More enamoured, serve it yet. 
Though it hate thee, suffer long, 
Put the Spirit in the wrong." 

It were an impertinence to attempt to explain a 
poet's meaning ; but were ever lines more impressive 
in their counsel to serve the highest right — not for 
reward, nor bread, but for pain, or fear, or need ; to 
love, though love's light be obscured ; to love so deeply 
and truly as to work a miracle and " behold the sun at 
night." 

The keenest significance is often condensed in his 
words as in these couplets : — 

" Thought is the wages 
For which I sell days." 

" Would'st thou seal up the avenues of ill ? 
Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill." 

" What boots it ? What the soldier's mail 
Unless he conquer and prevail 1 " 

To the supreme gift of life, — personal charm, — 
Emerson gives this tribute : — 

" I hold it of little matter 
Whether your jewel be of pure water, 
A rose diamond or a white, 
But whether it dazzle me with light. 
I care not how you are dressed, 
In coarsest weeds or in the best : 
But whether you charm me, 
Bid my bread feed and my fire warm me." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 127 

With this gift of the gods — this perfect inflorescence 
of wit and grace — Emerson was signally endowed, 
and Mr. Longfellow eloquently recognized this charm 
when he called the Concord seer " the Chrysostom of 
his day." 

In the group of poems entitled " Initial, Dsemoniac, 
and Celestial Love," there is the most perfect exposition 
of holy and consecrated love, in its immortal significance, 
untouched and unchanged by any of the changes or the 
incidents and accidents of life on earth, that is por- 
trayed in the English language. Not even the sonnets 
of Shakspeare, nor Mrs. Browning's " Sonnets from 
the Portuguese " contain anything more noble than such 
lines as these from " The Celestial Love." 

" But God said, 
' I will have a purer gift ; 
There is smoke in the flame ; 
New flowerets bring, new prayers uplift, 
And love without a name. 
Fond children, ye desire 
To please each other well ; 
Another round, a higher, 
Ye shall climb on the heavenly stair, 
And selfish preference forbear ; ' 

Nor less the eternal poles 

Of tendency distribute souls. 

There need no vows to bind 

Whom not each other seek, but find. 

They give and take no pledge or oath, — 

Nature is the bond of both : 

No prayer persuades, no flattery fawns, — 

Their noble meanings are their pawns." 



128 BOSTON DAYS 



Again we find in Emerson : — 

" Give all to love ; 
Obey thy heart : 
Friends, kindred, days, 
Estate, good-fame, 
Plans, credit, and the Muse, — 
Nothing refuse. 

Follow it utterly, 
Hope beyond hope ! " 



The Emerson and the Alcott households almost 
equally divide the interest of those who still make 
their passionate pilgrimage to Concord. 

The life of the Alcott family is an epic poem, and its 
quality is fairly photographed in Louisa Alcott's " Little 
Women," — a story that has so marvellously touched life 
because it was written out of the very springs of vitality. 

Mr, Alcott was the mystic by nature and by grace. 
He was great when tried by the standard of spiritual 
measurement ; but his faculties did not relate them- 
selves to the needs of ordinary life. Measured, too, by 
professional demands, he had too little of the applied 
powers to have ever made a successful teacher, author, 
or lecturer on genuine professional lines. Mr. Frothing- 
ham, in his " Transcendentalism in New England," 
says of Mr. Alcott : " He is not a learned man in the 
ordinary sense of the term ; not a man of versatile mind 
or various tastes ; not a man of general information in 
worldly or even literary affiiirs ; not a man of extensive 
commerce with books. Though a reader, and a con- 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 129 

staut and faithful one, his reading has been limited to 
books of poetry — chiefly of the meditative and interior 
sort — and works of spiritual philosophy. Plato, 
Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblichus, Pythagoras, Boehnie, 
Swedenborg, are the names oftener than any on his 
pages and lips." 

Mr. Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., Nov. 29, 
1799, the eldest of eight cliildren. His ancestry was 
that of the plain living and high thinking which has 
contributed the best elements to American citizenship. 
The boy was born with a taste for books. The limita- 
tions of poverty were in the little household, but while 
there was poverty of the purse there was no poverty 
of the spirit. The kingdom of the mind, like that of 
heaven, is open to all who can receive. Not that 
there could be claimed for Mr. Alcott the dower of a 
great genius. It was instead that of a very unique 
personality, — a nature singularly pure, sweet, and 
trustful as a child ; with no little unconscious but 
never offensive egotism ; hospitable to all generous 
impulses and high thought, but almost totally deficient 
in what Emerson calls the useful, reconciling talents. 
Of him Emerson wrote to Carlyle in October of 1862 : 
" As for Alcott, you have discharged your conscience 
of him manfully and knightly. I absolve you well. 
He is a great man, and was made for what is greatest ; 
but I now fear that he has already touched what best 
he can and through his more than prophetic egotism 
and the absence of all useful reconciling talents, will 
bring nothing to pass, and be but a voice in the wilder- 

9 



130 BOSTON DAYS 



iiess, as you do not seem to have seen in him under his 
pure and noble intellect. I fear that it lies under 
some new and denser clouds." Mr. Alcott apparently 
thought that Pheidias need not be always tinkering. 
His nature was created for an Arcadian age, and to 
the shrewd, sharp, economic New England atmosphere 
he brought no adaptation. Of economic concerns 
and the market Mr. Alcott had as little conception as 
the great god Pan might bring. His affinities were 
far more with grave, mystic contemplation while loiter- 
ing " in the reeds by the river." Yet here he was in 
this work-a-day world, where the poor man must pro- 
ceed to get a living before he can altogether live, — 
a world which insists on the logical development that 
depends on the material for its first stage and substantial 
basis. Mr. Alcott's ideal nature, however, was only 
fitted for an ideal world. He was full of love and 
trust, and faith and fine insights. Unfortunately faith 
and love do not keep the pot boiling, and the fires of 
the gods cannot be transmuted to domestic service. 
Nor was Mr. Alcott sufficiently great in intellect to 
command from the world its material resources in 
return for his own bestowal of finer gifts. Agassiz 
declared his independence of the market, and asserted 
that his time was too valuable to give it to earning 
money. But he gave the world that which enriched 
its resources, which had its positive value to the econo- 
mists as well as its special message to the scholar, and 
for him the world of bustling activities was well lost. 
Not so Mr. Alcott. He had a message of value, but 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 131 

the time was not yet ripe. His theory of the education 
of children, which was the most tangible and positive 
contribution he had to make to the age of his early 
manhood, was regarded as dreamy and unpractical. 

It was the development theory, the truth that a little 
later haunted the brain of Froebel and of Pestalozzi, 
but the busy, practical New England life was not 
then ready for this grafting of higher truth. Ex- 
cepting with Emerson and Margaret Fuller, Bronson 
Alcott, in his earlier life, found little sympathy and 
appreciation. Yet his message was one that could 
wait. In any retrospective glance over the wonderful 
Nineteenth century, the appearance of this purely Greek 
nature seems more than ever an anomaly in New England 
life. Emerson has wittily said : — 

" Unless to thought is added will, 
Apollo is an imbecile." 

Mr. Alcott was by no means an imbecile, yet it must 
be confessed that not much power of will was ever 
added to his thought. His purposes were always 
nebulous and undefined, and yet so pure and exalted 
that they were a tremendous force for the good. 
George Eliot, in her " Middlemarch," makes Dorothea 
say something to the effect that by desiring what is 
good, even if we do not know exactly what it is, we 
become a part of its power. This was illustrated in 
the life of Bronson Alcott. The story of his early life 
is not unfamiliar, — his attendance at a district school, 
his experiences as a pedler, — but it was only as he 



132 BOSTON DAYS 

came to Boston and began to find his own place that 
his life began to take on significance. 

In June of 1836, some years after his marriage, he 
wrote to his mother, saying : " You are associated in 
my heart with sympathy forever. I was diffident ; you 
never mortified me. I was quiet ; you never excited me. 
I loved my books ; you encouraged me to read. You 
knew my love for the beautiful, and you cherished 
it. I am sure that I owe not a little of my serenity of 
mind, hope, and trust in the future to you," 

When Mr. Alcott met and married Abigail May 
(a sister of Rev. Samuel May), he found the ideal 
complement of his nature. They were married in 
King's Chapel, in Boston, in May, 1830. Miss May 
was the daughter of Colonel Joseph and Dorothy 
(Sewall) May, born in October, 1800, a woman of 
singular beauty and force of character. Mrs. Alcott 
quite understood the life which she was entering 
on her marriage. Soon after that event she wrote to 
her brother : " INIy husband is the perfect personification 
of modesty and moderation. I am not sure that we 
shall not blush into obscurity and contemplate into 
starvation." There was in Connecticut an educational 
fund of $1,000,000 which Mr. Alcott — not an edu- 
cated man in the college sense, not a man possessing 
at that time any social or financial influence — resolved 
should be used for higher educational purposes than had 
heretofore been the custom, and as a lofty purpose en- 
forces its own right of way he succeeded in efiljcting this 
decision. Education, indeed, in the broad sense of the 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 133 

terra, was Mr. Alcott's ideal aim, and there are results 
seen to-day in the better training of children that can be 
traced to his influence. To speak of the better class of 
the young people of his day as not being " educated " is 
slightly misleading, for in culture they far exceeded many 
of the college-bred men and women of to-day. At the 
age of nineteen we find Miss May (afterward Mrs. 
Alcott) reading Fdnclon in the original, studying Latin 
and botany, and reading Hume, Gibbon, Hallam, Scott, 
Locke, and Stewart, taking these authors into her daily 
life. But one smiles to read in a passage of her 
diary the way in which Mr. Alcott entertained his 
fiancee during the engagement. She writes to a 
friend : — 

" He read to me two interesting articles, — a review of 
'Hints for the Improvement of Early Education and 
Nursery Discipline ' and one on the ' Management of 
Children with a View to their Future Character.' " 

A wonderful life began with this new household, — a 
life which radiated peace, tenderness, sweetness, and 
beauty to tlie community, and finally to all the world. 
The potency of a noble ideal is seen in the fact 
that Mr. Alcott, when young, unknown, and poor, 
with no conceivable influence in the world save that 
of his own lofty thought, determined that a Connecti- 
cut fund for educational purposes should be used 
for higher ends than those to which it had been 
devoted, and he succeeded. Soon after their marriage 
the Alcotts removed to Germautown, a suburb of 



134 BOSTON DAYS 



Philadelphia, where Louisa Alcott was born on her 
father's birthday (November 29) in 1832. 

The friendship of Emerson and Alcott (as notable as 
that of Goethe and Schiller) must have begun before 
the Alcotts' removal to Germantown, for in 1838 Emer- 
son said of his friend : " Alcott is a ray of the oldest 
light. They say the light of some stars that parted 
from the orb at the deluge of Noah has only now 
reached the earth." The autumn of 1839 found the 
Alcotts again in Boston, where Mr. Alcott opened 
the famous Temple School, which Elizabeth Pea- 
body has described. Of his arrangements Mr. Alcott 
said : — 

" I have spared no expense to surround the senses 
with appropriate emblems of intellectual and spiritual life. 
Paintings, busts, and books have been deemed important. 
I wish to fill every form with significance and life, thus 
placing the child in spiritual loveliness." 

With thirty pupils at a tuition of $60 per year Mr. 
Alcott entered on this work. To have $1,800 a year 
looked to him like a competency, and his work was joy, 
for in it he expressed his highest conception of life. It is 
a sad commentary on the press of that day that the local 
papers attacked this ideal school until it had to be sus- 
pended, and Mr. Alcott's health broke down with the 
disappointment and grief. Emerson, ever hospitable 
and generously considerate, invited the Alcotts to 
come to his house to recover, and in his note he said : 
" If you will come here and get well, we will agree on 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 135 

hours of sitting together and apart, and nobody shall be 
allowed to annoy you." In October of 1837 Emerson 
wrote of Alcott to Dr. Furness : — 

" I shall always love you for loving Alcott. He is a 
great man ; the god with the herdsmen of Admetus. I 
cannot think you know him now, when I remember how 
long he has been here, for he grows every month. His 
conversation is sublime ; yet when I see how he is under- 
estimated by cultivated people I fancy none but I have 
heard him talk." 

In the "Sonnets," which Mr. Alcott wrote in his 
eightieth year, he thus describes the early reading of 
his wife: — 

" My lady reads, with judgment and good taste, 
Books not too many, but the wisest, best, 
Pregnant with sentiment sincere and chaste, 
Rightly conceived were they and aptly dressed. 
These wells of learning tastes she at the source, — 
Johnson's poised periods, Fenelon's deep sense, 
Taylor's mellifluous and sage discourse. 
Majestic Milton's epic eloquence, — 
Nor these alone do all her thoughts en'gage, 
But classic authors of the modern time, 
And the great masters of the ancient age. 
In prose alike and of the lofty rhyme : 
Montaigne and Cowper, Plutarch's gallery, 
Blind Homer's Iliad and his Odyssey." 

The children of Mr. and Mrs. Alcott were Anna Bron- 
son, born in 1831 ; Louisa May, in 1832; Elizabeth, and 
May, born in 1834 and 1840. The third daughter was 
the "Beth " of " Little Women," and died in early girl- 
hood. May Alcott became an artist, and married in 



136 BOSTON DAYS 



Paris a Swiss gentleman, M. Nieriker. A year later 
she (lied, leaving a little daughter named Louisa May, 
for her aunt Louisa, who immediately adopted her, and 
during all her childhood the little girl was in Concord 
with her mother's family, the especial pet and darling of 
her aunt and grandfather. On Miss Alcott's death her 
father came, taking the little maid with him to his Swiss 
home in Geneva. The eldest daughter, Anna Bronson, 
married Mr. John Pratt. She died leaving two sons, 
one of whom was adopted by his aunt Louisa, and his 
name legally changed to Alcott. 

The two brothers, Mr. Alcott and Mr. Pratt, the sons 
of Anna Alcott Pratt ; and Miss Louisa May Nieriker, 
the daughter of May Alcott Nieriker, are the only liv- 
ing grandchildren of Mr. Alcott, whose name and life 
continue to be among the present vital forces in New 
England life. 

The husband and wife read together from Aristotle, 
Plato, Bacon, Carlyle, Shelley, Sismondi, and various 
other authors. The sonnet in which (in his advanced 
age) Mr. Alcott describes Elizabeth Peabody is reminis- 
cent of her association with his school, and it is fairly a 
portrait of the great-souled woman : — 

" Daughter of Memory! who her watch doth keep 
O'er dark Oblivion's Uxnd of shade and dreani, 
Peers down into the realm of ancient Sleep, 
Where Thought uprises with a sudden gleam 
And lights the devious path 'twixt Be and Seem. 
Mythologist ! that doth thy legend steep 
Plenteonsly witli opiate and anodyne, 
Inweaving fact with fable, line with line, 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 137 

Entangling anecdote and episode, 

Mindful of all that all men meant or said, — 

We follow, pleased, thy labyrinthine road, 

By Ariadne's skein and lesson led : 

For thovi hast wrought so excellently well, 

Thoii drop'st more casual truth than sages tell." 

In liis schoolroom Mr. Alcott placed the busts of 
Plato, Socrates, Shakspeare, and Milton, a head of 
Jesus in high relief, and other works of art, Emerson 
said of it : " When Alcott had made the room beautiful 
he looked at his work as half done." 

The way in whicli the people of those days wrote the 
most lengthy letters to each other constantly, and 
the way in which they wrote their daily journals by the 
yard, so to speak, suggests that time must have been 
far more unlimited than now. Probably the simplicity 
of ways and means had much to do with this. The 
diaries of Emerson, Alcott, Miss Peabody, Margaret 
Fuller, etc., contain the most abstruse reflections, as, 
for instance, in one entry of Alcott's in 1856 he begins 
by noting that he has had a long conversation with 
" L. G." regarding the ante-terrestrial life, and he runs on 
for pages on this subject. It is not, however, tliat 
life is the less noble or exalted now, in this new cen- 
tury, than at that time ; it is rather that we are trans- 
lating tlie abstract into the practical realization ; that 
the dreams of the past have become the deeds of to-day. 
An evening is not passed in discussing the origin of the 
myth of Ceres after the fashion of Margaret Fuller and 
her associates, but rather, perhaps, there is discussed 
the way to improve tenement-houses or to establish 



138 BOSTON DAYS 



vacation schools, or to bring the teaching of music 
within the reach of every one, and this translation of 
theory into practical activities is by no means retro- 
gressive, but progressive instead. The rich and beauti- 
ful past of Boston has flowered in a still richer and 
more beautiful present. 

Somewhere about 1840 " The Dial " appeared, and the 
contributions of Mr. Alcott excited no little ridicule. 
In the "Memoirs" of Mr. Alcott written by Mr. 
Sanborn and Dr. Harris this passage occurs : — 

' ' Our apparent failures are often the greatest success ; 
and there is nothing, not even the Crucifixion, which the 
levity of mankind cannot hold in derision for a time. 
Great was the laughter in Boston, and lively, no doubt, 
the village cachinnation of Concord, when the Boston 
' Post ' daily burlesqued Alcott in ' The Dial,' and Emerson 
in his lecture-room ; when Dr. Holmes, at the festivals of 
Harvard College, laughed at Edmund Quincy, at Garrison 
and Phillips, as — 

" Men such as May to Marlborough chapel brings, 
Lean, hungry, savage, an ti-every things, 
Copies of Luther in the pasteboard style — " 

Or, with more copious rhetoric specially barbed for 
Alcott and Emerson, recited this — 

" With uncouth words they tire their tender hmgs, 
The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues ; 
' Ever ' 'The Ages ' in their page appear, 
' Alway ' the bedlamite is called a ' Seer ; ' 
On every leaf the ' earnest ' sage may scan, 
Portentous bore ! their ' many-sided ' man — 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 139 

A weak eclectic, groping vague and dim, 
Whose every angle is a half-starved whim. 
Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx. 
Who rides a beetle, which he calls a ' Sphinx.' " 

Mr. A Icott's experiment at Fruitlands — some twenty 
miles from Concord — has become historic. The phi- 
losopher made a great distinction between the products 
that " aspired," or grew in air, as wheat and fruits, and 
those which basely and ignominiously grew in the 
ground, as beets and potatoes. The latter he considered 
unfit for food. Emerson wrote of this experiment : 
" Alcott and Lane are always feeling of their shoulders, 
to find if their wings are sprouting ; but next best to 
wings are cowhide boots, which society is always 
advising them to put on. It is really Alcott's dis- 
tinction that, rejoicing or desponding, this man always 
trusts his principle, whilst all vulgar reformers rely on 
the arm of money and the law." 

A little later Emerson again wrote : — 

" Last night in the conversation Alcott appeared to 
great advantage, and I saw again, as often before, his 
singular superiority. As pure intellect I have never 
seen his equal. The people with whom he talks do not 
ever understand him. . . . Yesterday Alcott left me, 
after three days spent here. I had lain down a man and 
had waked up a bruise, by reason of a bad cold, and was 
lumpish, tardy, and cold. Yet could I see plainly that 
I conversed with the most extraordinary man and the 
highest genius of the time. He is a man. He is erect; 
he sees, let whoever be overthrown or parasitic or 
blind." 



140 BOSTON DAYS 



Mrs. Cheney has said that while Theodore Parker 
admired Alcott and recognized his value, he found no 
help from him on account of their different intellectual 
methods. The Alcotts returned to Concord from the 
Fruitlands experiment, and about 1845 established 
themselves in the Orchard House, near Emerson, and 
adjoining the Wayside, Hawthorne's home. Thoreau, 
about this time, built his hut on Walden Pond, and 
there located himself. A series of "conversations" 
(which seemed to be the favorite amusement of the 
day, their opera, their theatre, as it were) were held, 
in which Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, Dr. 
Channing, James Freeman Clarke, and Alcott took part. 
In one of these conversations Mr. Alcott said : — 

" The desire for wealth has its good side also. Cali- 
fornia, with all its greed of gold, will become poetical ; 
but what men desire is not the true wealth, although 
commerce has been and is our most adventurous missionary 
and civilizer. Trade imports things which minister to 
the lower nature, but we want an importation of all good 
things, so as to form the perfect man and the great nation. 
Let the Oriental scriptures come to us as well as the 
silks, the tea, and the diamonds, — let them be translated 
for the common benefit of mankind, so that we may trace 
the stream of inspiration to its sources." 

Of late years the " Oriental scriptures " have come 
to American life and their greatness has become rather 
generally familiar. The present age is not a sordid 
material one, but is rather the heir of all the ages and 
freighted with still richer treasure than that of a half- 
century ago. 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 141 

It is sometimes asked, " What did Mr. Alcott leave 
as tangible results of life ? He made no special con- 
tribution to literature ; he founded no institutions." 

The reply may be that Mr. Alcott was to the century 
a source of the purest and most potent influence which, 
though diffused like the air and hardly crystallized into 
language or literature, is yet, like the atmosphere, a 
most potent and indispensable power in the general 
life of humanity. Influence is the most spiritual form 
of power, and that of this ideal and pure-hearted man 
permeates the life of Boston to-day and radiates, indeed, 
so widely that to it no limits may be assigned. JNIr. 
Alcott and his family continued to pass most of their 
life in Concord. When Louisa Alcott's genius first 
began to make itself felt, money for the first time flowed 
in to make life easier in a household whose altars were 
always consecrated to truth and aspiration. Mr. Frank 
B. Sanborn has said : — 

" Wherever Alcott dwelt the altars of learning stood 
and were served with daily worship, for he was the most 
studious of mankind, as well as the most radical and 
reformatory." 

The Alcott household life was vividly interpreted in 
the pages of Miss Alcott's "Little Women," and it 
there lives and radiates its beautiful influence to gene- 
ration after generation. 

" Alcott had singular gifts," said Emerson, " for 
awakening contemplation and aspiration in untaught 
and in cultivated persons." How strangely introspective 



142 BOSTON DAYS 



were these lives, and how much more indeed did they 
get out of life than those who never pause long enough 
to be steeped in an impression ! 

When the Alcott family took up their residence in 
Concord, in 1857, in the "Orchard House," the Haw- 
thornes were in Europe, not returning until three years 
later. In the spring of 1858 Louisa Alcott writes in 
her diary : — 

" Came to occupy one wing of Hawthorne's house (once 
ours) while the new one was being repaired. Father, 
mother, and I kept house together ; May being in Boston, 
Anna at Pratt Farm, and, for the first time, Lizzie ab- 
sent. . . . July, 1858. Went into the new house and 
began to settle. Father is happy ; mother glad to be at 
rest ; Anna is in bliss with her gentle John ; and May 
busy over her pictures, I have plans simmering, but 
must sweep and dust, and wash my dish-pans awhile 
longer till I see my way." 

In the " Memoirs " of Bronson Alcott Mr. Sanborn 
says of this period in the Alcott fortunes : — 

" These first years of family life at the Orchard House, 
although not years of outward prosperity, were a season 
of great importance for the literary activity and the per- 
sonal enjoyment of the Alcott family. The early circle 
of friends who had found Concord so delightful from 
1840 to 1848 was still unbroken by death, — for only 
Margaret Fuller, who was shipwrecked in 1850, had 
passed away ; and Hawthorne, after his long I'esidence in 
Europe, was returning to spend the rest of his life at 
Concord. Emerson was in his most active career as a 
public teacher by lectures and discourses ; Thoreau also 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 143 

lectured frequently, and was making those observations 
on Nature and Man which since his death have filled so 
many volumes ; and Ellery Channiug, after a short ab- 
sence in New Bedford, where he edited a newspaper, had 
returned to Concord, and was living in the immediate 
neighborhood of Thoreau. Mrs. Ripley, that learned 
lady, who read Greek for pleasure, dwelt in the Old 
Manse, with her daughters near her ; and Elizabeth Hoar, 
since her father's death in 1856, was occupying his hos- 
pitable house, and joining in the studies and pursuits of 
her friends, young and old." 

When Mr. Alcott was about to make a trip abroad, 
Emerson thus wrote of him to Carlyle : — 

" About this time, or perhaps a few weeks later, we shall 
send you a large piece of spiritual New England, in the 
shape of A. Bronson Alcott, who is to sail for London 
about the 20th of April, and whom you must not fail to 
see, if you can compass it. A man who cannot write, 
but whose conversation is unrivalled in its way, — such 
insight, such discernment of spirits, such pure intellectual 
play, such revolutionary impulses of thought ; whilst he 
speaks he has no peer, and yet all men say ' such par- 
tiality of view.' I, who hear the same cliarge always 
laid at my own gate, do not so readily feel that fault in 
my friend. But I entreat you to see this man. Since 
Plato and Plotinus we have not had his like. I have 
written to Carlyle that he is coming, but have told him 
nothing about him. For I should like well to see Alcott 
before that sharp-eyed painter for his portrait, without 
prejudice of any kind." 

The "Orchard House" where the Alcotts lived so 
long is one of the homes cobwebbed with memories. 



144 BOSTON DAYS 



The stately trees vocal in the evening wind ; the orchard 
embalmed in the " Concord Days " of Mr. Alcott ; 
*' May's Studio," where sweet May Alcott sketched and 
painted and dreamed; the shaded grounds where the 
four " Little Women " played, — all make up a beauti- 
ful picture that still lives in memory. Associated with 
this home are those exquisite and touching poems of 
Mr. Alcott and of Miss Alcott when the shadow of 
sorrow fell, and the artist daughter and sister had gone 
from them to that far, fair country, where flowers are 
fadeless and where love is deathless. 

" It was but yesterday 
That all was bright and fair 
Came o'er the sea 
So merrily, 
News from my darliiig there. 

Now o'er the sea 

Comes hither to me 
Knell of despair, 
' No more, no longer there.' 

" Ah, gentle May ! 
Could'st thou not stay ? 
Why hurriest thou so swift away ? 
No, — not the same. 

Nor can it be, 
That lovely name, 

Ever again what once it was to me. 

" Broken the golden band, 
Severed the silken strand, 

Ye sisters four ! 
Still to me two remain, 
And two have gone before ; 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 145 

Our loss, her gain. 

And He who gave can all restore. 
And yet, why, 
My heart doth cry, 
Why take her thus away ? " 

When one reflects that these tender, beautiful lines 
were written by the silver-haired sage in his eiglity-first 
year, the purity of his life is realized anew in being thus 
in tune with " the holiness of perfect thought." 

In his latest years he told in verse the story of his 
life, from the time the *' mild schoolmaster" wooed his 
love, fair Abby May, and led his bride out of the old 
King's Chapel to begin their wedded life together; 
through the years wlien children came to crown his 
life ; through the beautiful friendships which that hos- 
pitable home invited ; and closing with the last touch- 
ing lines read over the lifeless form of his friend, Mv. 
Emerson. The " Love's Morrow " commemorated tlie 
death of his daughter May in the far foreign land, and 
the coming of her baby daughter to his heart and home 
is lightly touched in these simple stanzas : — 

" Voyager across the seas, 

In my arms thy form I press ; 
Come, my baby, me to please, 
Blue-eyed nursling, motherless. 

" Safe, ye angels, keep this child, — 
Lifelong guard her innocence ; 
Winsome ways and temper mild, 
Heaven, our home, be her defence !" 

In one of his sonnets to Emerson occur the lines, — 

10 



146 BOSTON DAYS 



" Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend ! 
And lifelong hath it been high compliment 
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled." 

One addressed to Margaret Fuller says of her life, — 

" Charming all other, dwelling still alone." 

Professor Harris is addressed as, — 

" Interpreter of the Pure Reason's laws 
And all the obligations Thought doth owe, 
These high ambassadors of her great cause." 

As the Christian of old marked the year with prayers, 
Mr. Alcott marked his years with his poems, which tell 
all the story to the reader who holds the key. Of old 
John Brown he would speak in earnest words of his 
martyr-spirit. 

"He knew just what the result would be to him," 
said Mr. Alcott, " and he was ready for the sacrifice ; 
nor do I believe freedom would ever have triumphed as 
it did without the aid and the inspiration of his life." 

The fame of Bronson Alcott is not that of the literary 
man in the exclusive sense of creative literature. It 
was more archetypal, — the man who stood for the idea 
itself, for the pure thought, and who was less concerned 
with its expression. Emerson's estimate of Mr. Alcott 
as far and away the greatest man of his time is one that 
the ages will justify. Dr. Harris and Mr. Sanborn con- 
cur largely with this judgment. The more deeply one 
studies the shaping, all-determining power of thought, 
the more does one come to say with Emerson, " In 
majesty Alcott exceeds." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 147 

The Alcott family were a living illustration of the 
truth that poverty cannot greatly hinder the higher 
progress of life when there is affluence of the spirit. 
The divinest gifts are free to all. 

" 'T is heaven alone that is given away, — 
'Tis only God may be had for the asking." 

The childhood of Louisa Alcott was one of singular 
force and beauty. " I go to sleep repeating poetry, — 
I know a good deal," she had recorded in her diary at 
the age of nine. At sixteen she began to handle a 
pen, and she received five dollars for a story in the 
" Saturday Gazette " — which went to buy a shawl for 
her mother. In these early years she heard the lectures 
by George William Curtis ; Theodore Parker invited her 
to his Sunday evening reunions, where she met Wendell 
Phillips, Garrison, Dr. Hedge, Mrs. Howe, the Whip- 
pies, and Sumner. She heard Mr. Whipple's lecture 
on "Courage," — which revived her own. She heard 
a reading by Fanny Kemble ; and passed Sunday at the 
Emersons. " I can't do much with my hands," she 
writes in her journal about this time, " so I will use my 
head as a battering-ram to make a way through this 
rough-and-tumble world." She records the time in 
which she read the life of Charlotte Bronte and says : 
" Wonder if I shall ever be famous enough for people 
to care to read my story and struggles." Of Emerson 
she writes, too, about this time : " Father is never happy 
far from Emerson : the one true friend who loves, 
understands, and helps him." 



148 BOSTON DAYS 

All these experiences and thoughts and efforts 
brought Miss Alcott up to her twenty-fifth year, when 
the family removed to the " Orchard House " destined 
to be their first permanent home. A few years of con- 
stant struggle passed by, and in 1867 Mr. Niles, of 
Roberts Brothers, asked Mhs Alcott to write a girl's 
book, and this was the initiative of the great success 
of her life, " Little Women." She had herself no idea 
of the magnetism, the vitality, that was in it. " We 
really lived most of it," she said, " and if it succeeds, 
that will be the reason of it." 

In literary Boston, Miss Alcott was a unique per- 
sonality. To the distinctively literary guild she is even 
still something of a puzzle in that for one thing she 
left no " correspondence," in the usual sense of the 
author. Her letters were restricted to the limits of her 
family and personal friends, rather than ranging over 
epistolary communings with others of her guild. Her 
life left her little leisure after the duty next her was 
done, and it was in her character to fulfil faithfully this 
" duty lying next " before making any excursions into 
flowery fields beyond. 

Her stories are transcriptions rather than creations, 
and if the Alcott family life had not been what it was, 
the " Little Women " and " Little Men " and the other 
delightful stories could never have been written. For 
they were the literary flowering of outward and actual 
experiences. Coming directly out of life, Miss Alcott's 
books appeal to life. It was the spell of that vital 
magnetism of which she held the secret. All this time, 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 149 

instead of giving herself over to creative visions, Miss 
Alcott's chief concern was for the liousehold needs, — 
the coat required for the philosophic father, the warm 
wrap for the worn and gentle mother, the hat for 
" Amy," the gown for " Beth," the shoes for herself. 
The demands of the household life encompassed her 
round about. The marvel is that she could have writ- 
ten at all, only — and this clause contains the key and 
the clue — only that this was a household of idealism 
and ideals, and thus there was always in the very 
atmosphere that spiritual stimulus wliich makes the 
hardest things in life easy and the rougli places smooth. 
" Visions," well said George Eliot, " are the creators 
and feeders of the world." Some of the more arti- 
ficial writers or critics of writers who do not suffi- 
ciently relate literature to life assert that Miss Alcott's 
stories lack this or that, and are not " literature." Yet 
her books are translated into more than a half a dozen 
languages ; they are widely read in half a dozen countries, 
and her name is a household word where the names of 
some of these superfine critics will never be dreamed of 
or heard. 

Miss Alcott appealed to the higher qualities of the 
spirit in our common humanity, and the response was 
universal. She had an infinite capacity for affection, 
great love for the people, an exquisite tenderness, keen, 
practical good sense, and a fund of humor that enliv- 
ened daily life. Here is an extract from a letter written 
to her mother in 1868, that well illustrates these 
qualities : — 



150 BOSTON DAYS 



"It's clear that Minerva Moody [by which name she 
called herself] is getting on in spite of many downfalls, 
and by the time she is a used-up old lady of seventy or so, 
she may finish her job and see her family well off. A 
little late to enjoy much, maybe, but I guess I shall turn 
in for my last long sleep with more content in spite of the 
mental weariness than if I had folded my hands in ele- 
gant idleness, or gone into fits of despair because things 
moved so slowly." 

Louisa Alcott was indeed, a great woman, a great 
character ; and her literary work, extensive and valuable 
as it is, was still but one of her many forms of expres- 
sion. If the true purpose of literature is to invigorate 
and to elevate life, then, indeed, did she fulfil this high 
purpose. She was a thoroughly noble woman. Not of 
the type of the traditional saint or martyr, — she was 
very human, and to the last found an eager and impetu- 
ous temper, needing wise control, to be among her 
marked traits ; but the quality of her life was noble. 
Never, in herself or in others, could she consent to the 
ungenerous or the trivial. The entire atmosphere of the 
Alcott home was that of aspiration. There was no 
poverty of the spirit, — the only form in which poverty 
is hopeless. 

The story of Louisa Alcott's life is one of the most 
tender and touching in all the literature of biography. 
In one thing, especially, her life was unique, — in that 
it was one of the widest human relatedness. She was 
always the friend, the helper, the caretaker. By taste 
and temperament her father was detached from ordinary 




'-^ 



/ 



Louisa M. A /cot I 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 151 

affairs. He was formed for all high and beautiful 
things, for conversation, for philosophic meditations. 
He essayed teaching. ]Many of his ideas were truly 
great ones in educational science, yet they lacked that 
power to relate themselves to existing conditions which 
makes such ideas of immediate value. Mrs. Alcott 
was a woman of remarkably clear mind, fine perception, 
lofty ideals, and practical tact. The Mays were all ex- 
ecutive in their nature and Miss Alcott combined many 
of the ancestral traits of the Alcotts and the INIays. 
She was the perfect flower of a mixed heredity. She 
could do anything and everything, — make a bonnet, 
wash dishes, cut and make clothing, nurse the sick, 
cook, scrub the floor, act in private theatricals, write 
verses, be the life of a social assembly, or write a book 
of which fifty thousand copies were sold before it was 
placed on the market at all. How much more than a 
" literary woman " alone, was this woman of literature, 
this generous, noble spirit who came to this world not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister. I am sure that 
we will not think less of her when, after unexpectedly 
receiving $100 for some literary work, she writes in her 
journal : — 

'' So the pink hyacinth was a true prophet, and I went to 
bed a Imppy millionaire, to dream of flannel petticoats 
for my blessed mother, paper for father, a new dress for 
May, and sleds for my boys." 

Louisa Alcott lived a far larger life than the mere 
" literary " one of the traditional author. No human 



152 BOSTON DAYS 



need appealed to her in vain. She was a great favorite 
socially. As a raconteur she had hardly a rival. Her 
dramatic vividness and her fund of humor made her 
the most inimitable of story-tellers. And her sympathy 
was as strong as her courage ; and these, united with a 
hopeful and most sunny disposition, made her a most 
responsive and delightful friend. 

Fame has its inconveniences, but Miss Alcott was 
too simple and sweet and genuine not to enjoy hers. 
So much love was poured out to her all over the land 
that she could not fail to feel its spontaneity and 
beauty. " I asked for bread and got a stone — in the 
shape of a pedestal," she would say laughingly, but the 
letters and gifts and adoration of her vast constituency 
touched and pleased her always. 

After the appearance of " Little Women " her fortune 
seemed assured ; yet success is a thing always making 
and never made. It has no finality. It is progressive, 
or it is nothing. So with Miss Alcott the conflict con- 
tinued. She would fly from Concord and shut herself 
up in an upper floor room which she called " Gamp's 
Garret," in a tall house iu some retired nook in Boston, 
where for weeks she would write, emerging only at twi- 
light, until the book in hand was completed. It is a 
most curious study to note the constant interweaving 
of the ideal and the practical in her life. 

Mrs. Alcott had a natural literary gift, as her beauti- 
ful letters to friends and her diary records reveal. But 
the wife of an idealist must, perforce, often refrain from 
hitching her wagon to a star and perhaps drive to the 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 153 

market-place instead. Yet slie would not have had 
him otherwise. There are other qualities which create 
happiness in a home than the ability to grasp the 
coin of the realm. It cannot be claimed for Mr. 
Alcott that he was dowered with great genius, but 
rather that his was a very unique personality. It was 
a nature singularly pure, sweet, and trustful, with no 
little unconscious but never offensive egotism ; hos- 
pitable to all high and generous thought, but almost 
totally deficient in what Emerson calls " the useful, 
reconciling talents." 

The life of the Alcott family is indeed a unique 
chapter in New England history. The period covered 
by the life of Bronson x\lcott was the period of New 
England's greatest literary activity, the period in which 
ideas were formed that helped to shape the destiny of 
the nation, and to influence all the future. During 
Mr. Alcott's life Garrison, Sumner, Emerson, Theodore 
Parker, Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Maria Child lived 
and died. Their senior, he survived them all. He occu- 
pies an unrivalled place in history and literature. Not, 
strictly speaking, a man of letters, he had affinities for 
all literature and scholarship. Not a reformer, he had 
the spirit of reform, and did much to inspire reformers. 

One of his own finest expressions is in this para- 
graph : — 

"Thought feeds, clothes, educates. The idealist is the 
capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained. 
The idealist gives an insight into life deeper than that of 
any other school of thought, and an age deficient in ideal- 
ism is an age of imperfect and superficial attainment." 



154 BOSTON DAYS 



The graves of the Alcotts — the five low stones mark- 
ing the last resting-place of the father, mother, and 
daughters — is one of the most impressive objects in the 
cemetery of Sleepy Hollow. Here is the earthly close 
of a household life that represented the purest and most 
perpetual form of the ideal life. Here they lie — the 
low stones bearing only initials. "A. B. A., 1799- 
1888," marks the grave of Amos Bronson Alcott, whose 
watchword of life was indeed that "Thought feeds, 
clothes, educates." "A. M. A., 1800-1870," marks 
that of Abby jMay Alcott, his wife. " E. S. A.," 1835- 
1858," " M. A. N., 1840-1879," and " L. M. A.," 1832- 
1888," mark the graves of the daughters, Mrs. Pratt, 
the married daughter, being buried in another lot by 
her husband. On Miss Alcott's grave, however, as a 
concession to public interest, is a little slab with 
" Louisa M. Alcott " inscribed over the spot where 
lies all that was mortal of one of the noblest of 
women. Her books have been translated into half a 
dozen languages. Their influence is constantly increas- 
ing. Wherever high thought and noble purpose and 
spirituality of aspirations are held dear, will be loved 
and revered the name of Alcott, made forever great, in 
all that aids spiritual development, by the father and 
daughter whose lives were singularly united in affection 
and in all high aims. 

Meantime at "The Wayside" the Hawthorne life 
was like a page from the richly illuminated missals in 
the ancient library in Siena. In Sophia Hawthorne's 
diaries we find such passages as these : — 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 155 

" September, 1860. 
"Julian illuminated till tea time ; and after tea I read 
to both him and Rose a chapter in Matthew, told them 
about Paul. Rosebud has been drawing wonderfully on 
the blackboard recognizable portraits of Mr. l]enoch and 
Julian. . . . We all met at the Aicotts' at tea time. 
Mr. Alcott was sweet and benign as possible, and Mrs. 
Alcott looked like Jupiter Olympus. . . . Elizabeth Hoar 
spent the whole of yesterday morning with me. AVe 
talked Roman and Florentine talk. She thought our 
house the most fascinating of mansions. She is always 
full of Saint Paul's charity. On the Roman table is a glass 
dish of exquisite pond lilies, which Una brought from the 
river ^this morning ; and out of the centre of the lilies 
rose a tall glass of superb cardinal flowers." 

And again : — 

" January, 1862. 

" Mr. Thoreau died this morning. The funeral services 
were in the church. Mr. Emerson spoke. Mr. Alcott 
read from Mr. Thoreau's writings. The body was in the 
vestibule covered with wild flowers. We went to the 
grave. Thence my husband and I walked to the old 
Manse and Monument. Then I went to see Annie Fields 
at Mr. Emerson's. ... I read (Christ the Spirit). I 
read about Alchemy and Swedenborg." 

The Hawthornes have a most interesting history. 
Jnlian Hawthorne, in his biography of his parents, has 
by no means " spoiled a story for relation's sake," but 
has related the strange traits of his ancestors. Witch- 
haunted Salem produced much uncanny living. The 
great romancer had his peculiarities, as is well known, 
though these were largely counteracted by his wife, — 



156 BOSTON DAYS 



gentle, wise, sweet Sophia Peabody, who caine of a 
family eminently sane and harmoniously attuned, Mrs. 
Hawthorne was even more than the perfect wife ; she 
was the heaven-appointed guardian of her husband's 
genius, and it is no exaggeration to say that but for her 
exquisite qualities the marvellous romances of Haw- 
thorne, wliich are the very inflorescence of American 
literature, would never have been written. The genius 
of Hawthorne was of too subtle and delicate a nature 
to have flourished in an uncongenial atmosphere, and it 
was his wife who made possible the most perfect condi- 
tions for his art. In 1844 she wrote in a private letter 
to her sister of Hawthorne's delicacy of genius : — 

" He waits upon the light in such a purely simple way 
tliat I do not wonder at the perfection of each of his 
stories. Of several sketches first one and then another 
came up to be clothed upon with language after their own 
will and pleasure. It is real inspiration, and few are 
reverent and patient enough to wait for it as he does. I 
think it is in this way that he comes to be so void of 
extravagance in his style and material. He does not 
meddle with the clear, true picture that is painted on his 
mind." 

Nathaniel and Sophia (Peabody) Hawthorne had 
three children, — Una, Julian, and Rose. The elder 
daughter was gifted but unbalanced, and she died in 
London at a comparatively early age. Julian Haw- 
thorne began early to make a name for himself in 
literature, and his work is constantly before the public. 
Rose became the wife of George Parsons Lathrop, 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 157 

a writer of ability who was truly a son to the elder 
Hawthorne in the sense of being his best interpreter. 
Nothing in this line has ever equalled Mr. Lathrop's 
" Study of Hawthorne," which is fairly a hand-book, 
indispensable to the lover of his great romances. Rose 
Hawthorne was a great beauty as well as a woman of 
charming gifts and most winning personality, and she 
still retains much of that beauty of coloring and win- 
some grace, her Titian gold hair, and beauty of 
expression. 

Mrs. Lathrop has the literary gift of her family, and 
to fugitive magazine work she has added a book 
(" Memories of Hawthorne "), in which she has given 
to the world revelations of her father that no one else 
could have given, and which are indispensable to a 
clearer understanding of the man who is unquestionably 
the greatest romancist in the English tongue. IMrs. 
Lathrop had a store of letters to draw upon, — letters 
written by her mother and her aunt, the celebrated 
Elizabeth Peabody (who in her later years was 
called " Tiie Grandmother of Boston "), to a large 
number of the most noted people of their day. 
The Peabodys were a genial and cordial race, with 
literature, art, and social intercourse as " the three 
gracious deities" of their home, with the daughters 
all attractive yet different, — Elizabeth "profoundly 
interesting," Mary considered to be exceptionally 
"brilliant," and Sophia "lovely." On their marriage 
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody took up 
their residence in the " Old Manse," forever immor- 



158 BOSTON DAYS 



talizeci in jNIr. Hawthorne's " JMosses." And what days 
are those revealed in Sophia Hawthorne's letters from 
the Old Manse! — when Emerson comes, "with his 
sunrise smile, " Ellery Channing, " radiating light," and 
Elizabeth Hoar, " with spirit voice and tread." Surely 
a precious heritage were these letters to Rose Haw- 
thorne Lathrop, and exquisitely has she used them in 
her fascinating volume. 

The Hawthorne family are a marked example of the 
curious persistence of individuality, which in some of 
them has been so strong as only to be termed eccen- 
tricity. IVIadam Hawthorne, the mother of the great 
romancist, betook herself to her own room on the upper 
floor of her Salem house and did not descend the stairs 
again for two years. She dressed exclusively in white 
and isolated herself from the world. A sister of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne carried out her intense individu- 
ality through life, and he, too, was a man who walked 
apart from the world. He had the isolation of his 
temperament as well as that of his rare and delicate 
genius. His life appears like a spiritual drama. 

As the scenes change, from the night in Salem, 
when Hawthorne returned to his home after his dis- 
missal from the Custom House, discouraged, weary, 
sad, and his wife exclaimed cheerfully, " Now you can 
wn'ite your book ; how ft)rtunate ! " — from that scene, 
which was the initiatory phase of his immortal ro- 
mance, " The Scarlet Letter," through the vicissitudes 
of their life in Concord, in the Berkshire hills, and then 
in Liverpool and Loudon and Paris and Italy, — the 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 159 

panorama is one of singular interest and charm. It has 
been left for later years more fully to reveal the exqui- 
site nature and the high gifts of Sophia Hawthorne. As 
is well known, she was one of three gifted sisters, — 
the others being Mary, who married Horace Mann, and 
Elizabeth Peabody, the great philanthropist and thinker, 
who died unmarried at the age of ninety-four. Mrs. 
Hawthorne herself had the literary gift, and had she fol- 
lowed her clue she, too, would have been an author of 
distinction. As it was, she might well have said : — 

" My life is the poem tlicat I would have writ ; 
But I could not both live and utter it." 

In December of 1842 Mrs. Hawthorne writes : ^ — 

"My dear Mart, — I hoped I should see you again 
before I came home to our Paradise. I intended to give 
you a concise history of my Elysian life. Soon after we 
returned my dear lord began to write in earnest, and then 
commenced my leisure, because till we meet at dinner, I 
do not see him. I did not touch a needle all summer and 
far into the autumn, Mr. Hawthorne not letting me have 
a needle or a pen in my hand. We were interrupted by 
no one, except a short call now and then from P^lizaljeth 
Hoar, who can hardly be called an earthly inhabitant; 
and Mr. Emerson, whose face pictured the promised land 
(which we were then enjoying), and intruded no more than 
a sunset or a rich warble from a bird. One evening, two 
days after our arrival at the Old Manse, George Hillard 
and Henry Cleveland appeared for fifteen minutes on 
their way to Niagara Falls, and were thrown into rap- 
tures by the embowering flowers and the dear old house 

1 " Memoirs of Huwtlioi'up," liy Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. 



160 BOSTON DAYS 



they adorned, and the pictures of Holy Motliers mild on 
the walls, and Mr. Hawthorne's study and the noble 
avenue. We forgave them their appearance here because 
they were gone as soon as they had come, and we felt very 
hospitable. We wandered down to our sweet sleepy river, 
and it was so silent all around us and so solitary that we 
seemed the only persons living. We sat beneath our 
stately trees, and felt as if we were the rightful owners 
of the old abbey which had descended to us from a long 
line. The tree-tops waved a welcome, and rustled their 
thousand leaves like books over our heads. But the 
bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary to 
us, though we were lovers of it." 

Hawthorne died (in May, 18G4) in New Hampshire, 
as will be remembered ; and when his body was brought 
home for burial the casket was carried directly to the 
church. The townspeople transformed the entire inte- 
rior into a bower of bloom with apple blossoms, so that 
wiien Mrs. Hawthorne entered she said it looked to her 
like a heavenly festival. 

In INIr. Longfellow's commemorative poem on Haw- 
thorne he thus pictures the scene : — 

" The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, 
And the great elms overhead 
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms 
Shot through with golden thread." 

The burial of Hawthorne, as pictured by Mrs. Whipple, 
one of his nearest friends, was a beautiful and pathetic 
scene. The casket was taken to the Concord Church, 
and there the Saturday Club came to pay the last trib- 
ute of respect. Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, Holmes, 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l6l 

Whipple, Lowell, Peirce, and Fields sat side by side. 
As the simple services closed, they all, moved by simul- 
taneous accord, rose and bent for a last look above the 
dead friend. The little concourse of people all walked 
to Sleepy Hollow. Only one carriage, that bearing 
Mrs. Hawthorne, was in tiie jDrocession. As Agassiz 
entered the cemetery he stopped and gathered a little 
bunch of violets, which he dropped on to the casket as 
it was being lowered, and each member of the Saturday 
Club cast into the open grave a spray of arbor vitw. 
At this time JNIr. Longfellow thus wrote to Mrs. 
Hawthorne : ^ — 

June, 1864. 

Dear Mrs. Hawthorne, — I have long been wishing 
to write to you, to thank you for your kind remembrance, 
but I had not the heart to do it. There are some things 
that one cannot say ; and I hardly need tell you how 
much I value your gift, and how often I shall look at the 
familiar name on the blank leaf, — a name which, more 
than any other, links me to my youth. 

I have written a few lines trying to express the impres- 
sions of May 23rd, and I venture to send you a copy of 
them. I had rather no one should see them but yourself, 
as I have also sent them to Mr. Fields for the " Atlantic." 
I feel how imperfect and inadequate they are ; but I trust 
you will pardon their deficiencies for the love I bear his 
memory. More than ever I now regret that I postponed 
from day to day coming to see you in Concord, and that 
at last I should have seen your house only on the outside! 

With deepest sympathy, yours truly, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 
1 " Life of H. W. Longfellow," by his brother. 



162 BOSTON DAYS 



Mrs. Hawthorne wrote in reply : ^ — 

Concord, July 24, 1864. 

My dear Mr. Longfellow, — Your kind note and 
profoundly affecting poem moved me so much that it has 
been very difficult for me to reply. This you will entirely 
understand. We are both now entered fully into the 
worship of sorrow, and comprehend all its conditions. 

It is impossible for me to express the emotion with 
which I saw you, — on that wonderful day, that was 
made to seem to me a festival of life, — at the head of the 
line of loving friends, going up to the Mount of Vision. 
I have not seen you since the dread epoch of God's mys- 
terious dispensation to you. As it was, I did not see your 
face, but only the form and the white hair waving in the 
wind. I thought I had always sympathized with you; 
but that day I first knew what you had suffered. I under- 
stood the depths and heights of bereavement. Remember- 
ing also my husband's most affectionate regard for you, it 
was very sweet and grateful to see you there. I earnestly 
wished that I could convey to you my sense of these 
things. 

My dear Mr. Longfellow, the last Sunday Mr. Haw- 
thorne was at home, he was sitting in this little library with 
Julian ; and I, in another room, suddenly heard J. begin 
to read aloud a passage from "Evangeline" beginning 

'' Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder," 

and ending with the end of the poem. It broke on the 
perfect silence with singular power. At the close, Mr. 
Hawthorne said, " I like that," — and then there was again 
silence. We have often recalled that incident since. With 
Evangeline we have been enabled to murmur, " Father, I 

1 " Life of II. W. Longfellow," by his brother. 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l63 

thank you." I suppose you know how very much Mr. 
Hawthorne loved this poem ; and it was remarkable that 
Julian should happen to open to it on that last day he 
saw his father, and read that particular passage, with no 
forethought. 

The poem that you send me has such an Eolian deli- 
cacy, sweetness, and pathos, that it seems a strain of music 
rather than written words. It has in an eminent degree 
the unbroken melody of your verse. The picture of the 
scene you have now made immortal. 

" Its monument shall be your gentle verse." 

I cannot suppose that you would wish, now that All is 
gone, to come to this house, no longer a palace since the 
king has left it. But if you are ever in Concord, and 
would not feel too much saddened to enter these deserted 
halls, I should most gladly welcome you as one of his 
chief friends, tenderly valued. His visits to you in Cam- 
bridge used to be a great enjoyment to him. He always 
spoke of them as peculiarly agreeable. For the last years 
he had stood reverent, silent, and appalled before your 
unspeakable sorrow. 

With great regard, sincerely yours, 

Sophia Hawthorne. 

Emerson thus wrote to Mrs. Hawthorne : — 

" JulJ^ 1864. 

.... "The very selection of his images proves Behmen 
poet as well as saint, yet a saint first, and poet through 
sanctity. . . . 

" I have had my own pain in the loss of your husband. 
He was always a mine of hope to me, and I promised my- 
self a rich future in achieving it some day when we should 



164 BOSTON DAYS 



both be less engaged to tyrannical studies, and unreserved 
intercourse with him. I thought I could well wait his 
time and mine for what was so well worth waiting. And 
as he always appeared to me superior to his own perform- 
ances I counted this yet untold force an insurance of a 
long life. . . . 

" Ralph Waldo Emerson." 

After Hawthorne's death his family returned to 
London, where Mrs. Hawthorne and her ekler daughter, 
Una, died. The only son, Julian Hawthorne, returned 
to his own country and has made a name in literature 
which is being perpetuated by the genius of his daughter 
Hildegarde, who, as a poet and story-writer, is worthy her 
distinguished ancestry. Mrs. Lathrop (Rose Hawthorne) 
embraced the Catholic faith, in which she found a rap- 
ture of comfort and of leading, and, under the name of 
a rSligieuse, consecrates her life to the care of the suf- 
fering, finding in her self-abnegation the sublimest 
sweetness and joy. 

The dream of Mr. Alcott that an Academe might be 
established for conversational teaching of philosophy 
and literature fulfilled itself, as dreams have, indeed, a 
way of doing, in the establishment of the School of 
Philosophy in Concord, in 1878, which continued its 
summer sessions into the middle eighties, closing only 
with the close of Mr. Alcott's life. The story of this 
school is one of the inimitable chapters of New Eng- 
land history. When this nebulous idea that had so 
long haunted the platonic brain of Mr. Alcott assumed 
actual form of realization, it was to him the opening of 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l65 

a new heaven, for his sole idea of a terrestrial Paradise 
was that of conversation " where congregations ne'er 
break up." His choice circle of friends — Mr. Sanborn, 
Dr. William T. Harris, and others — sympathized in his 
vision, and longed to gratify him by its realization. Dr. 
Harris had a little before resigned his important work 
in St. Louis as the Superintendent of City Schools 
and lecturer at Washington University, to go to 
Concord and live near Emerson and Alcott as friend 
and neighbor during the remainder of their lives, and 
had established his family in the " Orchard House " 
formerly occupied by the Alcotts. Here was the 
chamber where Louisa Alcott's " Little Women " was 
written ; here the scenes haunted by the " Little 
Women " and " Little Men ; " here the chamber occupied 
by May Alcott with her sketches of Flaxman's graceful 
figures, that were sacredly preserved by Dr. Harris, as 
they covered doors, panels, window-sills, and casings. 
Next to the Alcott home on the Lexington road, was 
the house which was formerly the home of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, " The Wayside," and which was then 
occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. 
George Parsons Lathrop. 

At this period Miss Alcott was much in Boston, 
engaged in her literary work, and Mr. Alcott made his 
home with his married daughter, Mrs. Pratt, who lived 
in another part of Concord. Mr. Sanborn, Dr. Harris, 
Emerson, Prof Benjamin Peirce, and Mrs. Cheney joined 
in the purpose to initiate Mr. Alcott's cherished ideal, 
and the first session of the Concord School of Philoso- 



166 BOSTON DAYS 



phy opened in the Orchard House on July 15, 1879, 
the programme including a Salutatory from Mr. Alcott 
and a course of ten lectures on " The Power of Per- 
sonality ; " ten by Dr. Harris on " Philosophic Know- 
ing ; " a course by Mrs. Cheney on " Art ; " by Dr. 
H. K. Jones on " Platonic Philosophy ; " by David A. 
Wasson on " Social Genesis and Texture ; " by Professor 
Peirce on " Ideality in Science ; " by Colonel Higginson 
on " American Literature ; " Dr. Thomas Davidson on 
the " History of Athens ; " one lecture from Emerson 
on " Memory ; " a course of three by Mr. Sanborn on 
"Social Science;" one by Rev. Dr. Bartol on "Educa- 
tion ; " and readings from " Thoreau's Manuscripts " by 
Mr. Harrison G. 0. Blake. 

The success of these conferences was so assured that 
the next year saw the building of the little Hillside 
Chapel in the Orchard House grounds, and the school 
opened with the following programme, which is pre- 
sented as typical of those of all the succeeding 
summers : — 

Mr. A. Bronson Alcott. — Five Lectures on Mysticism: 
1. St. John the Evangelist. 2. Plotinus. 3. Tauler and 
Eckhart. 4. Behmen. 5. Swedenborg. Mr. Alcott also 
delivered the Salutatory and Valedictory. 

Dr. H. K. Jones. — Five Lectures on The Platonic Philosophy, 
and five on Platonism in its Eelatiou to Modern Civiliza- 
tion : 1. Platonic Philosophy ; Cosmologic and Theologic 
Outlines. 2. The Platonic Psychology ; The Daemon of 
Socrates. 3. The Two Worlds, and the Twofold Con- 
sciousness ; The Sensible and the Intelligible. 4. The State 
and Church ; Their Relations and Correlations. 5. The 
Eternity of the Soul, and its Pre-existence. 6. The Im- 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS l67 

mortality and the Mortality of the Soul; Personality and 
Individuality ; Metempsychosis. 7. The Psychic Body and 
the Material Body of Man. 8. Education and Discipline of 
Man ; The Uses of the World we live in. 9. The Philosophy 
of Law. The Philosophy of Prayer, and the " Prayer 
Gauge." 

Dr. William T. Harris. — Five Lectures on Speculative Phil- 
osophy, namely: — 1. Philosophic Knowing. 2. Philo- 
sophic First Principles. 3. Philosophy and Immortality. 
4. Philosophy and Religion. 5. Philosophy and Art. — 
Five Lectures on the History of Philosophy, namely : 
1. Plato. 2. Aristotle. 3. Kant. 4. Fichte. 5. Hegel. 

Rev. John S. Kedney, D.D. — Four Lectures on the Philosophy 
of the Beautiful and Sublime. 

Mr. Denton J. Snider. — Five Lectures on Shakspeare : 1. Phil- 
osophy of Shakspearian Criticism. 2. The Shakspearian 
World. 3. Principles of Characterization in Shakspeare. 
4. Organism of the Individual Drama. 5. Organism of the 
Universal Drama. 

Rev. William H. Channing. — Four lectures on Oriental and 
Mystical Philosophy : 1. Historical Mysticism. 2. Man's 
Fourfold Being. 3. True Buddhism. 4. Modern Pessimism. 

Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney. — 1. Color. 2. Early American Art. 

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. — Modern Society. 

Mr. John Albee. — 1. Figurative Language. 2. The Literary 
Art. 

Mr. F. B. Sanborn. — The Philosophy of Charity. 

Dr. Elisha Mulford. — L The Personality of God. 2. Prece- 
dent Relations of Religion and Philosophy to Christianity. 

Mr. Harrison G. 0. Blake. — Readings from Thoreau's 
Manuscripts. 

Rev. Dr. Cyrus A. Bartol. — God in Nature. 

Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody. — Conscience and Consciousness. 

Mr. Emerson. — Aristocracy. 

Rev. Dr. Frederic H. Hedge. — Ghosts and Ghost-seeing. 

Mr. David A. Wasson. — 1. Philosophy of History. 2. The 
Same. 



168 BOSTON DAYS 

The Faculty was composed of Mr. A. Bronson 
Alcott, Dean, Mr. Emery, Director, and Mr. F. B. 
Sanborn, Secretary. These three, with Dr. William 
T. Harris, Dr. H. K. Jones, Miss Peabody, Mrs. 
Cheney, INIr. Snider, Dr. Kedney, Dr. Holland, or any 
of these and other lecturers who might be in Concord, 
constituted the Faculty for the time being; but the 
permanent and active members were Mr. x\lcott, Dr. 
Harris, ISIr. Emery, and Mr. Sanborn. The aim was, 
as Mr. Sanborn stated, "to bring together a few of 
those persons who, in America, have pursued, or desire 
to pursue, the paths of speculative philosophy ; to en- 
courage these students and professors to communicate 
with each other what they have learned and meditated ; 
and to illustrate, by a constant reference to poetry and 
the higher literature, those ideas which philosophy 
presents." 

The little chapel was almost as primitive as the 
groves where Plato taught. There were wide spaces 
between the rough boards of the walls where creep- 
ing vines and greenery found hospitable entrance and 
twined their way in with a decorative effect- The 
busts of Plato, Pestalozzi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
and A. Bronson Alcott were placed about, and a mask 
of Anaxagoras hung upon the wall, while over the 
mantel was an engraving of the " School of Athens." 
Other engravings and photographs, which were changed 
from time to time, added to the classic attractions. 
Upon a low platform in a wide alcove stood the table 
at which the lecturers placed themselves, and camp 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 169 

chairs, arranged rather for comfort than in geometrical 
figures, furnished the seats of the audience. 

The accessibility of the hillside in its alluring shade, 
from the chapel, in which the mercury not un frequently 
stood at ninety degrees, — without in the least disturbing 
the eloquence of the philosophers, — enabled the less 
philosophic mind occasionally to escape through the 
open door and enjoy a brief interlude in which to pull 
himself together for furtlier draughts of knowledge from 
the sages. During a five hours' discourse upou the 
" Genesis of the Maya," or of " Reminiscence as Related 
to the Pre-existence of the Soul," there was, to the 
unregenerate mind not fully initiated, a certain mundane 
joy in a brief vacation from these high themes, and it 
was found that on returning it was possible to rect)gnize 
the point to which the lecturer had conducted his 
hearers with no perceptible loss of its deep significance. 

In these days Dr. Bartol was a prominent figure, and 
his essays (not unfrequently more than three hours in 
length), were delivered in a peculiar chanting tone, 
with a rhythmic effect to which his fragile body corre- 
ponded, swaying with every inflection and emphasis like 
a leaf fluttering in the breeze. Mr. Alcott usually went 
to sleep during these incantations, and Miss Elizabeth 
Peabody, who always sat faithfully through every half 
day of the four to six weeks' sessions, also relapsed, at 
intervals, into apparent slumber, from which she would 
suddenly arouse herself with a movement that sent flying 
in various directions her bag, handkerchief, note-books, 
pencil, and all her various belongings which those of 



170 BOSTON DAYS 



the younger and non-distinguished persons sitting near 
considered it an honor to scramble about and pick up 
for her. When it came to the discussion of the theme, 
however, it always turned out that Miss Peabody, half- 
blind, nearly deaf, and wholly asleep, had yet heard 
everything that was said to much better advantage than 
any one else in the audience. 

Dr. William T. Harris, the present National Com- 
missioner of Education, whose eminence as a scholar 
and a philosophic thinker has conferred new exaltation 
and dignity on his high office, had achieved, even at this 
time, a wide recognition and following both in Europe 
and in our own country, as tlic leading exponent of 
Hegelian philosophy and the founder and editor of a 
journal not less unique than " The Dial," a periodical 
that made itself a pre-eminent aid to scholarly culture 
and the finest insight, — " The Journal of Speculative 
Philosophy." This magazine made a profound impress 
upon the thought of the day. Devoted essentially to 
philosophic thought, it also contained some of the 
clioicest literary criticism of the time. The reputation 
of Dr. Harris had preceded him, and for some years 
before the establishment of the School of Philosophy, 
he had been from time to time invited to lecture in 
Boston, where he was always received with ardent friend- 
ship and joyful recognition. Of the eminent character 
of the services of Dr. Harris, Dr. Cyrus Northrop, 
President of the University of Minnesota, in his address 
before the Yale Bicentennial Celebration (October 22, 
1901) said: — 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 171 

" He is a philosopher. He founded and has edited the 
' Journal of Speculative Philosophy,' the first journal of 
the kind in the English language, if the language of 
philosophy can properly be called English ; and yet he did 
not lose his common sense, his clear way of stating things, 
his power of suggesting new thoughts and plans to 
teachers and thus getting them out of the ruts, nor his 
ability to awaken enthusiasm in teachers for their work. 
Above the roar of the mighty flood of so-called pedagogical 
learning with which our country is being inundated, the 
clear good sense and philosophical suggestions of Mr. 
Hai'ris never fail to reach the understanding of teachers 
and to prove most helpful to them. His views on educa- 
tion are always sound, and the great multitude who 
listen to his words and in turn repeat them in substance 
to a still greater multitude, make his influence on the 
education of the people beyond calculation. Let him be 
honored as he deserves for what he has done and what he 
is doing. The government at Washington honored itself 
when it made Wm. T. Harris Commissioner of Education, 
and whatever the party in power he should be retained 
in his present office as long as he is able to serve the 
cause of education as well as he has done in the past." 

Dr. Harris is perhaps the most able and sympathetic 
of the interpreters of Emerson, and he has always 
discriminated carefully between the organic unity 
required in the drama or the novel, and the logical 
unity demanded in the prose essay. In Emerson's 
essay entitled " Experience " he felt that the dialectic 
art was strikingly revealed. " In this wonderful piece 
of writing," said Dr. Harris in reference to this essay, 
"we have a compend of his insights into life and 



172 BOSTON DAYS 



nature arranged in dialectic order. The first phrase 
brings us to the consciousness of illusion." 

Miss Alcott used laughingly to say that she " fled the 
town " when the philosophers began to arrive ; but for 
a great number of other people, apparently, it was the 
time to fare forth to classic Concord. All in all there 
was an element of comedy, as well as of the serious 
pursuits of the scholar, in these Concord summers. Mr. 
Sanborn often looked on with a suspicious twinkle in 
his eye ; but the exquisite courtesy of all the leaders in 
this modern Academe — Mr. Alcott, Dr. Harris, Mr. 
Sanborn, and the lecturers who came and went — was 
not the least of the charm that impressed itself upon 
the devotee, and perhaps, indeed, upon even the camp- 
followers, who were by no means wanting. 

" Thou knowest not what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed hath lent." 

For there were cranks attracted to the "School of 
Philosophy " like moths to a light, and they were not 
invariably of the order of whom Dr. Holmes affirmed 
that they " turn the wheel of the universe." Yet 
largely the classic town was thronged with scholarly 
and aspiring truth-seekers, who, if not of an order to 
precisely set the lazy, sluggish Concord River on fire, 
were at least serious and reverent, and were largely 
composed of the choicest minds of the country. The 
audience, not unfrequently, was only less remarkable 
than the leaders who graced the platform. Saint and 
sage were attracted to this unique centre of speculative 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 173 

thought. It was considered the greatest of privileges 
to hear the remarkable lectures of Dr. Harris, — a privi- 
lege for which the scholar and thinker would gladly 
cross ocean or continent: Emerson's beautiful person- 
ality made immortal the two summers during which he 
was often present, but when the third summer session 
came it was to include memorial tributes to the seer 
who had just withdrawn from the visible communion of 
these choice spirits. Mr. Alcott was universally beloved 
and his " conversations " and his presence inspired a 
curiously intense interest ; and Mr. Sanborn, with his 
classic learning, his wide literary grasp and exceptional 
power of penetration'and insight, his wit, his mercurial 
brilliancy and magnetic charm of manner, was a potent 
factor in attracting a significant concourse to the little 
hillside chapel. 

While Dr. Harris expounded Speculative Philosophy, 
Dr. Hiram K. Jones, the celebrated Platonist, took for 
his province Platonic Philosophy under the heads of 
" The Platonic Idea of Deity," " The Platonic Idea of 
the Soul," " The Platonic Idea of the World, or the 
Habitation of the Soul," and " The Platonic Idea of 
History." 

Hiram K. Jones, M.D., LL.D., came from Jackson- 
ville, 111., where he was the founder and the president 
of the Plato Club, and he was regarded by students of 
that ancient worthy as the leading Platonist in this 
country. His lectures sometimes approached five hours 
in length, and there were those among the audience who 
would slip out of the little door into the shade and 



174 BOSTON DAYS 



fragrance of the hillside greenery, for a vacation inter- 
lude during the prolonged process of the good doctor's 
delivery of his insights into the Platonian realm. The 
attentive listener would hear him saying : — 

' ' All corporeality is related to a somewhat, of which it 
is corporality or body, as shadow to substance. From 
the thinker, is a spiritual power. Only spirit feels and 
thinks and moves and knows; and man only by means 
of corporeality. And man feels and thinks and moves in 
view of, and in relation to, three aspects of reality, — 
physics, metaphysics, and divinity — by means of three 
orders of corporeality — as instruments therein respec- 
tively of the three orders of knowing." 

Again, the learned Doctor would be heard announc- 
ing, — his words falling with the measured and slightly 
metallic sound of a phonograph : — 

" Man does not first think tree or animal shape, and 
then fumble about till he finds one, but he is first sentient 
of these forms by their image and impress upon his physi- 
cal sensorium, and thereupon arise the motion and form 
of his thought and science concerning those natures. 
And likewise in his psychical and spiritual sensoria man 
does not first think essence, soul, God, and then grope 
around in the limbo of ignorance and inexperience until 
he has found one of these forms, but he is first sentient 
of their form by means of the impress and reflection of 
the images of these natures in his psychic and pneumatic 
sensoria ; and toward these impressions spring the motion 
and form of his thought and knowledge concerning super- 
physical and super-essential natures." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 175 

Sometimes, indeed, an irreverent couple would leave 
these Platonic expositions of the " physical sensorium " 
and " spiritual sensoria " and be oflF for an hour's row on 
the Concord River, — whose current is so sluggish that 
Hawthorne said he swam across it every day all one 
summer without being able to determine which way it 
flowed, — but as the lectures of Dr. Jones were, like 
the quality of Japanese pictures, such as to permit 
approach from any angle of vision, — upside down, or 
divided anywhere ; any part, despite mathematical laws, 
being equal to the whole, — they lent themselves to the 
charming possibilities of being taken in sections. In- 
deed, the irreverent and unplatonic mind was not un- 
frequently found to insist that a part was better than 
the whole of the good doctor's discourses, whose length 
suggested the infinite leisure of the Eternities rather 
tlian the limits of an ephemeral summer's day. 

The session of the School of Philosophy for the 
summer of 1881 opened with a poem by Mr. Edmund 
C. Stedman, that afterward enriched the pages of the 
"Atlantic Monthly." In 1882 the poem was by Mr. 
Sanborn, — an ode of classic beauty, entitled, " The 
Poet's Countersign." Mr. Sanborn is a Harvard man, of 
the class of 1855, and has been for many years widely 
known throughout the country as a leader in social 
economics and for his counsel upon the management 
of charities, the care of the insane, and kindred topics 
as well as for his brilliant literary work. He was long 
the Secretary of the American Social Science Associa- 
tion ; he was Inspector of Public Charities for the State 



176 BOSTON DAYS 



of INIassachusetts, and has for many years been the 
Boston correspondent of the " Springfield Republican." 
He was the literary executor of Theodore Parker, the 
Unitarian preacher, and had many of his papers. He 
wrote the life of Henry D. Thoreau, which was pub- 
lished in the " American Men of Letters " series, and his 
biography of John Brown is one of the great contribu- 
tions to American literature. The opening of Mr. San- 
born's " Ode " is full of beauty, when the poet finds that 

"... another unretuniing spring hath passed," 

and one canto is as follows : — 

" Along the marge of the slow-gliding streams, 
Our winding Concord and the wider flow 
Of Charles by Cambridge, walks and dreams 
A throng of poets, — tearfully they go ; 
For each bright river misses from its band 
The keenest eye, the truest heart, the surest minstrel hand, — 
They sleep each on his wooded hill above the soxTowing laud. 
Duly each mound with garlands we adorn 
Of violet, lily, laurel, and the flowering thorn, — 
Sadly above them wave 

The waiL'ng pine-trees of their native strand ; 
Sadly the distant billows smite the shore. 
Plash in the sunlight, or at midnight roar, — 
All sounds of melody, all things sweet and fair 
On earth, in sea or air. 
Droop and grow silent by the poet's grave." 

Mr. Alcott's " Salutatory " for each session was always 
very characteristic : he welcomed the audience to the 
pleasant town and to the mental delights of Hillside 
Chapel. He spoke of the absorbing beauties of divine 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 177 

philosophy, — a subject which embraces eternal truth, 
righteousness, and beauty. There were but few orna- 
ments at the chapel, for they believed that a holy life is 
the only true beauty, as the eye itself, not what it sees, 
is beautiful. God is the true philosopher, he would 
continue, and is philosophy Himself. He would quote 
Hierocles, a commentator of Pythagoras, who said : 
" Philosophy is the purification and perfection of 
human nature, — its purification because it delivers us 
from the temerity and folly that proceed from matter, 
and because it delivers our affections from the mortal 
body, and its perfection because it makes it recover its 
original felicity by referring it to the likeness of God." 
Philosophy addresses the intellect, the affections, the 
will, Mr. Alcott would add. It has in its heart religion. 
A philosopher is a lover of truth. 

Dr. Harris gave during one session a series of lectures 
on " Socrates and the Pre-Socratic Philosophy," 
Aristotle's " De Anima," " Gnosticism and Neo-Platon- 
ism," " Christian Mysticism," " Philosophy of the 
Bhagavad Ghita," and one or two lectures on Art. 

" Philosophic knowing is to be distinguished from 
ordinary reflection," one would find him saying, in his 
musical vibrant voice, " through the fact that it sets up 
one principle as the explanation of the world, while 
mere reflection is content to find subordinate unities, 
and to make classifications and generalizations. Ordi- 
nary science seeks unities and tries to piece together the 
fragments of experience and to trace facts to principles ; 
but philosophy is more ambitious, and undertakes to 

12 



178 BOSTON DAYS 



find one principle for all facts. Say what we will of 
the pride of the human intellect, and of the desirability 
of humility, we find, after all, that the deepest interest 
of the human mind lies in the question which relates to 
the ultimate principle. The subordinate principles are 
not so important, — we can appeal from them to the 
higher ; but the absolute principle of all, — that is 
something that concerns the origin and destiny of all 
human beings. In this respect philosophy corresponds 
to religion, and both are conversant with the absolute 
principle." In his lecture on Aristotle Dr. Harris gave 
this fine and most valuable passage : — 

" Aristotle's work on the Soul, although a small book, 
has made a great impression on the thiuking of mankind. 
It is a treatise in three parts, having thirty chapters in all, 
and could be printed entire on a hundred pages octavo, 
with large clear type. It contains the application of the 
highest doctrines reached by Greek speculation to the 
knowledge of what is most interesting to man, — his 
spiritual nature. In whatever department Aristotle 
worked he reached distinctions that were fundamental, 
and gave them technical names of such aptitude that the 
scientific mind of all subsequent ages has gladly adopted 
them. To state the first elements of any science relating 
to man or to nature, is very nearly to talk the language 
of Aristotle. To use a thinker's technique, is, of course, 
in some measure to accept his view of the world. Dante, 
in the fourth canto of the ' Inferno,' calls Aristotle the 
' master of those who know,' — that is, of all who pursue 
science. So it has happened in this book on the Soul 
especially, that Aristotle's distinctions and definitions have 
formed the nucleus of all spiritual theories in psychology. 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 179 

It is therefore profitable for us to go over the inventory 
of his thoughts when we are studying the history of phi- 
losopliy, and investigating the origin of ideas current in 
our times and weighing their value." 

Scotch philosopliy when expounded by President 
McCosh of Princeton became a weighty matter in- 
deed — to the hearer, if not to the lecturer. During the 
several summers many of the same lecturers were heard 
in each session, and some new ones gave variation to the 
themes. On one evening Mrs. Julia Ward Howe lec- 
tured on " Dante and Beatrice," and among those present 
were Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Miss Ellen Emerson, 
and Miss Louisa M. Alcott. Mrs. Emerson was a slight 
shy, silent figure in black, with her soft white hair show- 
ing under her dark, cavern-like bonnet like a fringe of 
finest floss. Mrs. Howe's lecture was a noble and 
beautiful interpretation of the power of idealized love 
to lead to spiritual heights and holiest inspiration. 
Never has the sublime meaning of Dante's immortal 
poem been more wonderfully revealed than it was that 
evening by the fine insight and classical thought of 
Mrs. Howe. Her picturing of Dante's vision of Bea- 
trice was a representation so artistic and so impressive 
that painting or drama could hardly have enhanced its 
vivid power. 

Mr. Sanborn, lecturing on "The Oracles of New 
England," spoke in this beautiful way of " The Sphinx " 
of Emerson : — 

" I have been wont to consider this (the Sphinx) as the 
most remarkable oracular poem in literature," said Mr. 



180 BOSTON DAYS 



Sanborn; " far more so, even, than that brief compend of 
the Bhagavad Gita which Emerson published twenty-five 
years ago in the first number of the ' Atlantic Monthly,' 
under the name of ' Brahma.' Out of that poem you can 
only unfold by evolution a certain number or form of the 
Totality, but ' The Sphinx ' has implied in it the Totality 
itself, so far as this world of man is concerned. I expect 
to live long enough," he continued, " to see professorships 
established even at Harvard and Yale to explain this poem, 
as professors have for so many years been explaining 
Plato's ' Timoneous ' and Aristotle's ' Work on the Soul.' " 

The summer of 1881 found Elizabeth Peabody in 
Pennsylvania, unable to betake herself to the Platonic 
and Socratic platform, and to Mr. Alcott she wrote as 
follows : — 

"Dear Mr. Alcott, — Here I have before me the 
programme of the Concord School, the bill of fare a ban- 
quet of the gods, which I must miss because my material 
body is at odds with my psychic body (I wonder if Dr. 
Jones can explain why ?) . . . . I may be wound up to go 
another ten years, perhaps, not half dead, but alive and 
capable. And therefore I feel it necessary to say that 
you must get some one else to take my place, and since 
you want a paper on Dr. Channing let me advise you 
to ask Mr. Rowland G. Hazard, who once published a 
lecture on the ' Philosophical Character of Dr. Channing,' 
with whom he was, from early youth, in philosophic con- 
cord, having so attracted Dr. Channing by the metaphy- 
sical insight he showed in his maiden essay on language 
that Dr. C. took great pains to discover his identity that 
he might advise him to pursue as a life work his researches 
into yet unspoken truth." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 181 

Miss Pcabody proceeded to say that she had wished 
to speak, not on Dr. Channing or Margaret Fuller, as 
Mr. Alcott suggested, but on the ideal of the School 
of Philosophy itself. 

Tiie next season (1882) she came, an aged woman of 
unwieldy figure, Avhose cap was always falling off, and 
whose bag, pencil, and spectacles, as before noted, fur- 
nished constant employment to her votaries in collecting 
and picking them up from tlie floor. Lovely, golden- 
haired Mrs. Lathrop (Rose Hawthorne) was the de- 
voted attendant of her aunt Elizabeth. The Lathrops 
were living that summer at the Wayside, whose grounds 
joined those of the Orchard House, on whose hillside 
lawn the chapel was built. Miss Peabody was in a 
state of exaltation and beatitude during these lectures. 
Her hearing was impaired, but she occupied a seat near 
the lecturer, and she contributed to the discussion 
thoughts of essential value. 

Untidiness of dress was always, one is forced to con- 
fess, one of Miss Peabody's characteristics. Not un- 
cleanliness, but untidiness. It arose, it may be, from 
her utter unconsciousness of self. Miss Helen M. 
Knowlton, the artist, and the biographer of her friend 
and master, William Hunt, relates this amusing 
incident : — 

"I was in a street car," says Miss Knowlton "and 

Mr. , sitting by me, whispered the question as to 

whether I knew Miss Peabody. I replied that I did not, 
and he said : ' That is she in the other corner, but don't 
look for a minute.' The caution came too late, for as he 



182 BOSTON DAYS 



named her I glanced that way. It was in the days of 
hoops, and she sat serenely and meditatively in her seat, 
her hoop skirt flying up before her, disclosing a black- 
and-red petticoat and white stockings, but she was per- 
fectly unconscious of any disarray in her appearance." 

Mrs. Hawthorne, on the contrary, was a model of 
neatness and exquisite taste. Miss Peabody's care- 
lessness of personal attire was always a trial to the eyes 
of Emerson, who demanded neatness and order about 
him. It was probably due to a certain lack of executive 
and applied power. In fact, with more power on the 
plane of the visible and material, Elizabeth Peabody 
would have left a deeper impress upon her time than 
she has, as she would have fornmlated her work and 
related it more definitely to the needs of humanity. 
Transcendentalism, however, did its work in its asser- 
tion of the absolute supremacy of the spiritual over the 
material. That was what it stood for, and that is the 
inheritance that it left to the future. The present 
theosophical and metaphysical thought — the Christian 
science and spiritualistic trend in general — is but the 
same transcendental thought appearing under other 
names and conditions. The essential idea is the same 
in all. It is the assertion of man's diviner powers; 
the confident assurance while dwelling temporarily amid 
material tilings, he is essentially a spirit, living a spiritual 
life. 

In 1887 Miss Peabody published her last book, 
"Evenings with Allston, and Other Essays," and her 
preface to this collection of scattered papers which had 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 183 

first appeared in " The Dial " was singularly clear and 
forcible. 

There are no words strong or vivid enough to convey 
any adequate impression of the abounding love that was 
the keynote of the nature of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. 
She was essentially a spirit of love, of enthusiasm for 
humanity, and for the diviner phases of progress. 
" How rich she was ! " well said Mrs. Howe at the last 
services, held in the beautiful atmosphere of the 
" Church of the Disciples," on her death. " How rich 
in love, how rich in sympathy, how rich in interests ! " 
She loved every one. Her nature was a fountain of 
infinite tenderness and the most exalted and exquisite 
beauty of feeling and of appreciation. She was pecu- 
liarly fitted to enter into the kingdom of heaven. She 
lived in it while on earth and made this celestial joy in 
the entire atmosphere of her life. 

Among the memorable visitors to Concord in the 
early summers of the school, was Julia Romana Anagnos 
(Mrs. Michael Anagnos), the eldest child of Dr. and Mrs. 
Howe, a woman whose beauty and charm radiated like 
sunlight in the air. Mrs. Anagnos embodied her im- 
pressions of the school in a fanciful little sketch called 
" Philosophse Qusestor " and in this we find her saying 
of one lecture on the Buddhist faith : — 

"Genially as they enjoyed the noble essay, the 
audience did not seem converted to a wish for annihila- 
tion. On the contrary, they appeared extremely flourish- 
ing, and went to a musical party that very afternoon. 
The music gave rise to philosophic discussion, quite as 



184 BOSTON DAYS 



eagerly attended to as the art which called it forth. No 
piece was considered complete without the ringing out of 
a silvery voice in exposition of its meaning ; and the 
blending of the metaphysical with the artistic and social 
thought-factors on this occasion was felicitous in the 
extreme." 

As a liberal education in tlie beauty of courtesy, the 
School of Philosophy must be especially remembered. 
The unbounded mental hospitality for opposing views ; 
the infinite toleration of the leaders, Mr. Alcott, Dr. 
Harris, Mr. Sanborn, or any lecturer of the day, — Mrs. 
Howe, Dr. Jones, Mrs. Cheney, President McCosh, or 
younger lecturers, as Julian Hawthorne, who spoke 
once on the structure of novels, and George Parsons 
Lathrop, who gave a series of these lectures on " Color, " 
their liberality toward opposition or even ignorance, the 
gentle benignity and serene patience of Dr. Harris, who 
was always especially being questioned by persons in the 
audience, — all this spiritual loveliness of atmosphere 
must forever remain in memory as an added illustration 
of the profound truth involved in Tennyson's lines : — 

" For manners are not idle, but the fruit 
Of loyal nature and of uol)le mind." 

The work of the school was destined in various ways 
and through various channels to stand for a great liber- 
alization of ideas in all the radiant activity of study, 
thought, and expression, which communicated itself to 
the outer world and whose results and effects continue 
in ever widening influence. The " truth once uttered " 
is indeed like 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 185 

" A star, iiew-horn, that drops into its place, 
And which, once circling in its placid round, 
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake." 

In the April of 1882 Emerson, the beloved, passed on 
into the life more abundant, and the quiet town, whose 
associations have made it the classic spot in America, 
received a new consecration when, near the graves of 
Hawthorne and Thoreau, was made the grave of 
Emerson. It was a notable company that met in 
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and strewed the twigs of pine 
taken from the trees that Thoreau had planted, over 
the casket. 

Of the family were Mrs. Emerson and her daughters, 
Mrs. Forbes and Miss Ellen, Dr. Edwai'd Emerson, 
and other relatives. Among the friends present were 
Mr. Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, George William 
Curtis, Dr. William T. Harris, Elizabeth Peabody, ^Miss 
Longfellow, Mrs. Agassiz, Thomas Wentworth Higgin- 
son, President Eliot of Harvard, Mrs. Annie Fields, 
Henry James, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple, Dr. 
and Mrs. Hedge, J. Eliot Cabot (who was afterwards 
Emerson's biographer). Dr. Asa Gray, the famous 
botanist, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louisa Alcott, Pro- 
fessor Ilorsford, Charles Eliot Norton, Mrs. John A. 
Andrew, Rev. Dr. Bartol, and Mrs. Julia Ward 
Howe. 

The simple services were appropriate to the life and 
faith of him whom they commemorated. At the house 
Rev. Dr. Furness, Emerson's lifelong friend, read 
Tennyson's poem, " The Deserted House " : — 



186 BOSTON DAYS 

" Life and thought have gone away, 
Side by side, 
Leaving door and windows wide, 
Careless tenants they. 

Come away, for life and thought 

Here no longer dwell ; 
But in a city — glorious, 
A great and distant city — have bought 

A mansion incorruptible. 
Would they could have staid with us! " 

Two stanzas from Longfellovr's poem " Resignation," 
which five weeks before had been read at his own 
funeral, were repeated over Emerson. 

The plain wooden pulpit was covered with pine 
boughs ; and a beautiful harp of yellow jonquils, the 
gift of Louisa Alcott, was placed in front. The Emer- 
son School sent an open volume composed of flowers, 
the last page of which was of white lilies with the word 
"Finis" in blue forget-me-nots. The rich glow of 
jacqueminot roses and of scarlet and white geraniums 
lined the pulpit stairs, while above on the wall hung 
one single emblem, — a laurel wreath. The funeral 
march from Chopin, and " Pleyel's Hymn," by request 
of the family, were rendered on the organ. James 
Freeman Clarke entered the pulpit and Judge Hoar 
stood by the coffin. In a brief address, he said after 
referring to the universal sorrow on both continents : 

" But we, his friends and neighbors, feel that he was 
ours. He was descended from the founders of the town. 
He chose our village as the place where his lifeloug work 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 187 

was to be done. It was to our fields and orchards that 
his presence gave such value; it was in our streets, in 
which children looked up to him with love and the elder 
did him reverence. He was our ornament and pride. . . . 
O friend, brother, father, lover, teacher, inspirer, guide ! 
is there nothing more for us to do than to give thee our 
hail and farewell?" 

Selections from the Scriptures were read by Dr. 
Furness, and the chief address was given by James 
Freeman Clarke, who said, in part : — 

" It is not for me, it is not for this hour, to say what 
ought to be said of the genius which has kindled the fires 
of thought in two continents. The present moments 
belong to reverential love. We thank God here for the 
influences which have made us all better. The voice now 
hushed never spoke but to lift us to a higher plane of 
generous sentiment. The hand now still never wrote 
except to take us out of ' our dreary routine of sense, 
worldliness, and sin ' into communion with whatever is 
noblest, purest, highest. 

"That day dawned anew when the sight of the divine 
truth kindled a light in the solemn eyes of Channing and 
created a new power which spoke from the lips of Emer- 
son. Yet the young and hopeful listened with joy to this 
morning song ; they looked gladly to this auroral light. 
When the little book 'Nature' was published, it seemed 
to some of us a new revelation. Mr. Emerson then said 
what has been the text of his life, ' Let the single man 
plant himself on his instincts and the great world will 
come round to him.' He did not reply to his critics. He 
went on his way, and to-day we see that the world has 



188 BOSTON DAYS 



come round to him. He is the preacher of spiritual 
truth to our age. . . . The first time I saw him I went 
with Margaret Fuller to hear him preach in the church on 
Hanover Street. Neither of us then knew him. We sat 
in the gallery and felt that a new influence sweet and strong 
had come. . . . One summer afternoon we came to Con- 
cord and had a meeting in his parlor. There was George 
Ripley, admirable talker, most genial of men, and Orestes 
A. Brownson, full of courage, intelligence, and industry, 
who soon went over into the Roman Catholic church, and 
James Walker, of whom Mr. Emerson once said to me, 
' I have come to Boston to hear Dr. Walker thunder this 
evening,' Theodore Parker, and many others. Days of 
enthusiasm and youthful hope, when the world seemed so 
new and fair, life so precious, when new revelations were 
close at hand, as we thought, and some new Plato or 
Shakspeare was about to appear. We dwelt in what 
Halleck calls ' the dear charm of life's illusive dream,' and 
the man who had the largest hope of all, yet joined with 
the keenest eye to detect every fallacy, was Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. We looked to him as our master, and now the 
world calls him its master, — in insight, judgment, charm 
of speech, unfailing courage, endless aspiration. We say 
of him as Goethe said of Schiller: 'Lo, he went onward, 
ever onward for all these years — then, indeed, he had 
gone far enough for this earth. For care is taken that 
trees shall not grow up to heaven.' His work, like that 
of the apostle, was accomplished by the quantity of soul 
that was in him, — not by mere power of intellect, but 
' by pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kind- 
ness, by the Holy Spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word 
of truth, by the armor of righteousness on the right hand 
and the left.' " 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 189 

Those present felt the deeper significance in these 
lines from one of his own poems : — 

" Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
What rainbows teach and sunset show ? 
Voice of earth to earth returned. 
Prayers of saints that inly burned, 
Saying, ' What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent ; 
Hearts are dust, heart's loves remain ; 
Heart's love will meet thee again.' 

House and tenant go to ground, 
Lost in God, in Godhead found." 

After the prayer the venerable Mr. Alcott stepped to 
the side of the coffin and read the following sonnet of 
his own : — 

" His harp is silent ; shall successors rise, 
Touching with venturous hand the trembling string, 
Kindle glad rapture, visions of surprise. 
And wake to ecstasy each slumbering thing ? 
Shall life and thought flash new in wondering eyes, 
As when the seer transcendent, sweet and wise, 
World-wide his native melodies did sing. 
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories ? 
Ah, no ! that matchless lyre shall silent lie, 
None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill 
To touch that instrument with art and will : 
With him winged poesy doth droop and die ; — 
While our dull age, left voiceless, must lament, 
The bard high Heaven had for its service sent." 

The beautiful courtesy that characterized Mr. 
Emerson was a gift and a grace to all who met 
or passed him. It was different even from that fine 



lyo BOSTON DAYS 



breeding of cultured society, and liad about it the 
purely angelic atmosphere. His presence was more 
than the refined courtesy of polite life ; it was in itself 
a benediction. " While some persons pin me to ^the 
wall with others I walk among the stars," he has 
written. In his presence, truly, one walked among the 
stars. It is rare to find this exquisite quality of 
presence in such a degree as characterized Mr. Emerson, 
but it is also felt in Dr. William T. Harris, whose exqui- 
site, gentle courtesy seems to enfold one in the same 
atmosphere of angelic ministration, quickening intel- 
lectual thought, exalting spiritual perception, till life is 
seen on its mount of transfiguration. 

The loss of memory from which Mr. Emerson had 
suffered for some years was most touching. After the 
funeral of Longfellow, which he attended, he said to 
his daughter, IVIiss Ellen, " That gentleman whose 
funeral we have been attending was a sweet and beau- 
tiful soul, but I forget his name." One of the touching 
things said on learning of his death was the remark of 
Mrs. Lucy Stone, that " Mr. Emerson has found his 
memory now." 

The grave of Emerson on the crest of Sleepy Hollow 
is marked with a vast boulder of rose quartz. A bronze 
tablet bears the inscription : — 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 
Born in Boston, May 25, 1807. 
Died in Concord, April 27, 1882. 
" The passive master lent his hand 
To the vast soul that o'er him planned." 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 191 

By his side now lies his wife, and the grave of the 
little son Waldo, in whose memory he wrote the 
" Threnody," is next his own. On this stone is 
the inscription : — 

WALDO EMERSON, 

Died January, 1844, 
Aged five years and three months. 
" The Hyacinthine boy for whom 

Morn well might break and April bloom, 
The gracious boy who did adorn 
The world where into he was born." 

The Emerson Memorial lectures of the Concord 
School of Philosophy were fitly collected into a volume 
edited by Mr. Sanborn, which is one of the finest con- 
tributions to literature as well as to the study of the 
genius and character of Emerson. 

Mr. Sanborn's own noble lecture initiated these me- 
morial tributes, and in this address we find him saying of 
his lifelong friend and neighbor, who leaned upon him 
almost as a son : — 

" It is not given to us, and to few men can it be given, 
to measure the height and depth of Emerson's genius, 
either as poet or as philosopher. But there is an aspect 
of his philosophical character which we cannot too often 
dwell upon, — his flowing, unfailing courtesy to all men, 
his hospitality to everything that bore the upright face of 
thought, his deep sympathy and fellowship, beneath an 
exterior sometimes cold, with all that was human and 
aspiring. His friend Jones Very once said, in an essay 
on poetry too early forgotten : ' The fact is, our manners, 
or the manners and actions of any intellectual nation, 



192 BOSTON DAYS 



can never become the representatives of greatness. They 
have fallen from the high sphere which they occupied in a 
less advanced stage of the human mind, never to regain 
it.' But this remark, like almost everything in daily 
American experience, found its constant contradiction in 
Emerson; whose manners represented nothing else than 
greatness, and that not in a dazzling, overpowering way, 
but with the sweetness of sunlight." 

Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Howe spoke of Emerson with 
great felicity of appreciation. " He had power to take 
people into realms of thought and life," said Mrs. 
Howe. Dr. Harris, in a finely critical discussion of 
Emerson's prose, said : — 

"The essay on The Over-Soul treats of succession, 
surface, and reality, under other names ; that on Spiritual 
Laws, on reality and subjectiveuess ; that on Fate treats 
of temperament and succession ; those on Worship, 
History, Gifts, Heroism, Love, and such titles, treat of 
subjectiveuess. His treatises on concz'ete themes use 
these insights perpetually as solvent principles, but 
always with fresh statement and new resources of poetic 
expression. There is nowhere in all literature such sus- 
tained flight toward the sun — a flight, as Plotinus calls 
it, of the alone to the Alone — as that in The Over-Soul, 
wherein Emerson, throughout a long essay, unfolds the 
insights, briefly and adequately explained under the topic 
of ' surprise ' in the essay on Experience. It would 
seem as if each paragraph stated the ideas of the whole, 
and then again that each sentence in each paragraph 
reflected entire the same idea." 

Dr. Bartol discussed " The Nature of Knowledge — 
Emerson's Way." For more than an hour he held the 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 193 

large audience spellbound with the magic of his thought, 
saying, in part : — 

" An old apology makes a bishop say to a sceptic, 
' How can we guard our unbelief ? ' I bad thought to 
speak of the nature of knowledge, but Emerson's death 
and your appointment of this memorial day makes im- 
possible any theme that his spirit does not postpone into 
an illustration. I feel the magnetism from the name of 
one never accounted unbelieving, save by such as he had 
soared out of sight of into the heaven of faith. If I can 
bring back for a moment that light of our day which 
Emerson was, it will be a sober joy ; for to have lived in 
the same time with him, to have been his friend and 
shared his love, not demonstrative because loath to ask 
any return, is a memorable privilege. 

"Emerson had no code, or system, or creed : no com- 
prehensive, practical view of principles, but only keen, 
single perceptions, fatally certain within whatever field 
he surveyed and brought his perfect instrument or brain 
theodolite to bear. He was an insulated sun, as was 
Milton, Dante, Wordsworth, — an island rather than a 
star; and as Homer, Shakspeare, and Goethe were not, 
and the mighty Browning is not. His style is crisp and 
insular: he himself is a robe without seam, all of one 
piece : his leaf is a carcanet. His thoughts are a selection 
of beads to be strung, all belonging together, by their 
perfect shape and hue. But the best lines are like a 
succession of rockets, with their fierce sallies, shining 
trains, and handsome curves opening wide glimpses of 
the sky. His poems and essays are songs, not sym- 
phonies, odes and not dramas. But there was a tune in 
his mind so constant and sweet that he cared not for 
chords and pipes." 

13 



194 BOSTON DAYS 



The poem by Mr. A. Bronson Alcott in memory of 
his dead friend was one of the touching tributes ; the 
opening lines were : — 

" Shall from the shades another Orpheus rise ? 
Sweeping with venturous hand the vocal string ? 
Kindle glad raptures, visions of surprise, 
And wake to ecstasy each slumberous thing 1 
Flash life and thought anew in wondering eyes, 
As when our seer, transcendent sweet and wise, 
World wide his native melodies did sing. 
Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories 1 
Ah, no ! his matchless lyre must silent lie, 
None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill 
To touch that instrument with art and will. 
With him winged Poesy doth droop and die. 
While our dull age, left voiceless, with sad eye 
Follows his flight to groves of song on high." 

The School of Philosophy filled the closing years of 
Mr. Alcott with heavenly light. Mr. Sanborn — in that 
noble " Memoir " of Bronson Alcott, written by himself 
and Dr. William T. Harris, — quotes a note written by 
Alcott to a friend, in 1882, in which Mr. Alcott says : 

"Yes, the school is a delight and a realized dream of 
happy hours in days of sunshine. Life has been a sur- 
prise to me during these latter years, and I allow myself 
to anticipate yet happier surprises in the future still to be 
mine." 

During the preceding year, as Mr. Sanborn records, 
Mr. Alcott — then eighty-one years of age — had made 
a lecturing tour of seven months in the West, travelling 
more than five thousand miles, and holding conversa- 



CONCORD, AND ITS FAMOUS AUTHORS 195 

tions find lectures at the rate of more than one a day, 
and he returned from this journey in radiant health and 
witii a thousand dollars that he had earned during the 
time. 

Of Mr. Alcott's character Mr. Sanborn gives this 
admirable judgment : — 

" Without any distinguished literary gift and quite 
devoid of the training which best fits the literary man 
for his task, Alcott yet possessed what many men of let- 
ters always lack, — an original and profound habit of 
mind, directed toward the most serious questions that can 
occupy human thought. In this rare trait he surpassed 
ueai'ly all his contemporaries, and equalled those two be- 
tween whom he stood in age — Carlyle and Emerson — 
and from whom he differed so much in his intellectual 
equipment." 

Mr. Sanborn is especially felicitous in what he says 
regarding the " cheap wit " of which Mr. Alcott was 
the target. 

" That this hostility and misconception of his real pur- 
pose, which was high and beneficent, did not drive our 
philosopher into bitterness or insanity is one of the surest 
evidences of his intellectual greatness. He continued to 
love mankind when they rejected him, for he knew how 
transient must be that state of things against which his 
simple life was a protest." 

Mr. Sanborn quoted Dr. Hedge as saying that Mr. 
Alcott was " a spiritual hero," and that in him was a 
man "who scorned the bribes of earth, whose spirit 



lOti BOSTON HAYS 



(Iwi It im tlio lioiglits mul who souu;lit ooiiverso witli (lu> 
hoavonlv ami the oionial." 

l>r. Harris, who when a rlunior in \a\c CoWe^^v lirst 
met Mr. AU'ott, savs of his " i'onviMsatii>ns " : — 

'• It was poHiaps dillioiilt for tlioso who attoiidc*! the 
c'onvorsations to naiuo anv ono vahiabU^ idea tu" insight 
which thoy had gainoil thcro, Init {\w\ foil harnuM\iv)nsly 
attractoil to froo-thinkinu", and thoro was a fooling that 
i^roat stores of insijiht \:\y bovond what thov had ahoaily 
attainoil. That a pors»>n lias witliin him tho ptnvor of 
t:;rowth in insii^ht, is tho most vahiabh^ eonviotion that ho 
oan ao(|niro. C\MtainlY this was tiio frnit of I\lr. AU'ott's 
hibors in tlio Wost. (>rdin;!rily a person Kioks npon his 
own wit as a tlxod (inanlitv, and «U)os not try a second 
time to nnderstand anything found too dillicult on tlio Hrst 
trial. He set people to reading Kmerson and Thoreau. 
lie familiarized them with the names of IMato and Py- 
thagoras as great thinkers whose ideas are valid now and 
to remain valid thronghont the ages." 

Tliis School of l^hiloj^ophy may be held as one of the 
great eontribntions to the liberali/ation of tlnnight. The 
])l»ilosophio exi>ositions of Or. Harris wcm'c oi' nntoKl 
significance and bi>antv ; they enlarged the mind and 
exalted the spirit oi' all privileged to listen to such 
K'ctures. ami they have coniinunicatoil to tlie wi>r1d of 
thought an impulse that widens like the swelling waves 
of the ocean. l>r. Jones — albeit a trille ineoniprehen- 
sible — was a true interpreter of Plato; jMr. Sanborn, 
with his liberal and indeed almost exhanstless familiarity 
with classics and literature and his charm ami richness 
of ex{>ression ; Mrs. Howe's two tinest lectures — now 



C()NCORI>, AS\) /IS I'AMOOS Ar/JJlOUS ]<)7 

publiHlicd in a little brocliuro called "Modern Society" 

— wliicli were (J<iliven;<J liefon; the School; anrJ the 
many great thin kern of the «J;iy who wn: heard left a 
lastiiij^ iinpnjHH on tin; a^e. Mr. Aleott'n talks were full 
of iliiKnination, — and all thcKC made up a HericK of 
charrrKMl liourH in the Atnerican Academe. One heauti- 
fiil little exprcHHion IVo/n Mr. henf.on J. Snider -whoKC 
couPHC of lectiircH on (in;eee were hlfij^ularly inter(;Htinj( 

— waH made regarding \)v. llarrin. Mr. Snider, nti'v.r- 
ring to one of the lectnrcH of Dr. IfarriH, waH l<;d by the 
warmth of his enthiiHiaKrn into an extended reference to 
tin; great thinker in which he abruptly ch<;eked him- 
Kclf, Haying: " lie is too great for any praine of mine." 
So, surely, all who lintened to him felt regarding Dr. 
IfarriK, and tlie remark HuggCKted to one of th(; audience 
a litth; rhythmic " lm{)romfjtu," ' which off<;red itn trib- 
ute to Dr. Jlarris an the acknowh;dged Mahter, in the 
following Htanzas : — 

" H'; iH too great for any praise of ifjinc." 

Ho Kai'l the ai-tist whone rare toucti lia*! wrought 

For U8 the glow of Grecian iriorriH — the j-hririe 
Of buried majesty — of living thought. 

He, who8e fine power h;ji/l pictunj'l rnountairui oM, 
Ari'I brought us draughts fron» Helicou'w pure ntream; 

He, who of legend, myth, and poet t^dd, 
Of I)el})hic ora<;le aii<l myotic dream : — 

And who, witli Kuhtle power, revealed U) all 

The lihtening world immortal HhakeHpeare'8 art; 

He, too, <lir.rj-riii-A thi-s Hpell of wiKdom'h thrall: 
The grand ideal of our MaKter'H heart. 

1 " From Dreauilaiid Sent." Little, iirown & Co. 



198 BOSTON DAYS 



Teacher, Philosopher ! our Master still ! 

Thy words thrill life with subtler harmonies; 
Thy guidance teaches duties to fulfil ; 

Transfigures time in sacred mysteries. 

Thou art too great — we echo still the thought ; 

We reverence thy life as Wisdom's shrine. 
And say, O Master! all that thou hast wrought, — 

" It is too great for any praise of mine." 

The School drew together from all parts of the coun- 
try those who were interested in speculative philosophy ; 
and its liberal scope, wide range of intellectual sym- 
pathies, its inclusiveness of poetry and general literature 
with philosophy and ethics, made it one of the marked 
features, one of the important intellectual landmarks in 
the spiritual culture and advancement of the Nineteenth 
century. 



Ill 

THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 



All true, whole men succeed ; for what is worth 
Success's name, unless it be the thought, 
The inward surety, to have carried out 
A noble purpose to a noble end, 
Although it be the gallows or the block ? 

Lowell. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 

Song breathed from out the forest ; 

The total air was fame : 
It seemed the world was all torches 

That suddenly caught the flame. 

Emerson. 

|N the remarkable group of these poets and 
men of letters — Emerson, Longfellow, Haw- 
thorne, Holmes, Lowell, Whittier, Dr. Par- 
sons, and Mrs. Stowe — it is a curious fact to note how 
with them was closely associated a man who was not 
only one of the creative workers but who seemed also 
destined to be their friend, their interpreter, their stimu- 
lating and encouraging sustainer, Edwin Percy Whipple. 
Side by side with the great poets and romancers stood 
the critic, the man who fairly re-created and gave a new 
meaning to criticism, redeeming it from the paltry sense 
of discerning faults and conserving it to the high use of 
discerning virtues and beauties, and of interpreting these 
to the world, and almost, indeed, of interpreting the 
author to himself. This is the true office of the critic 
and of the critical reviewer of literature. It does not 
require any special ability to point out faults. That is 
the common task of common minds. But to discern 
and point out the significance of thought, the exaltation 
of the vision, and its true relation to intellectual pro- 



202 BOSTON DAYS 



gress, — this is indeed an office so high that it becomes 
wellnigh holy. Criticism of this noble quality was 
founded, so far as American literature goes, by Mr. 
Whipple. He was a great critic, — a critic not of 
literature alone, but of life as well. Young people who 
are reaching out toward the best that has been thought 
and done in the world cannot afford to fail of reading 
his " Character and Characteristic Men," " Success and 
its Conditions," " Outlooks on Literature, Society, and 
Politics," and the " Essays and Reviews." " Literature 
and Life " is the title of another volume of Mr. Whipple, 
which is an invaluable aid to clear conditions of thought 
and high conceptions of purpose. His work on " The 
Elizabethan Literature " still remains the most valuable 
contribution to the interpretation of that age, and con- 
temporary opinion would agree with the verdict of 
Charles Sumner, who wrote to Mr. Whipple as fol- 
lows : — 

CooLiDGE Home, 7th September, '69. 
My dear Whipple, — If anybody wrote as well about 
the Elizabethan authors as you have done, I have not 
read them. Your book is a real contribution, with knowl- 
edge, thought, and art. What an artist you are! 
Ever yours, 

Charles Sumner. 

It is like going into Aladdin's tower to be permitted 
to sit down with Mrs. Whipple in her own room in her 
home in Pinckney Street, — a room vibrating with 
memories and associations, — and listen to letters writ- 
ten to Mr. Whipple in the early days of that literature 



x3 



#V. j(^jE^G^«^ -/- AvOtct_, 






(J J ! ^_dL^ <''t^^ 



"v/ TV e-^> 



cl_^ "-^rv e-^> \/^ 






i/L O-^^ » <^t«V.c«_>< 'Co XrvC^i,^ "^/voJlL 



C^'-t/^*^. ' ^^^ • - vw; i-s^_x -^/voJ^ 



«-V-^W V>-A>-^ ♦y-V^^-tx-YOvO ^^A_y <^_ 



,^^tfii^^ «(SLio ^v^<2. ^ vx,ac<^c.cX_ v^.>Y^^^^~ 



, . ^XQ^-A^c^^ x/\ fwwtr 



Orw^^ 



Ola-c rf ^Cw<(. .A^-A ^CaVI Aje.^^MMJ' 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 203 

(wliich we now regard as our American classics) by 
Lowell, Longfellow, Wliittier, Hawthorne, Holmes, and 
others. One notable letter from Sumner (all whose 
letters were most delightful), was especially anmsing in 
its description of his announcement to various members 
of the Senate of the forthcoming visit of Emerson to the 
Capital. The fame of the Concord seer and poet had 
not apparently penetrated to the consciousness of these 
honorable gentlemen, and there was an inquiry among 
them as to who this Emerson could be, — the inventor 
of a clothes-wringer, then largely in domestic vogue, or 
the author of an arithmetic ? Or what title, indeed, 
had he to consideration ? " Most of them have settled 
on the theory that he is the inventor of the clothes- 
wringer," gleefully wrote Sunnier to Whipple. By 
which it must be surmised that the United States 
Senate of that decade was less noted for literary than 
for political acumen. 

Mr. Longfellow, returning fro.m one of his visits to 
Europe, thus writes to Mr. Whipple : — 

Cambridge, Sept. 7, 1859. 

Mt deak Whipple, — Many thanks for your book. 
Among my many welcomes home this is one of the 
pleasantest. It is, at most, as good as seeing and hearing 
you, which I know I shall soon have the satisfaction of 
doing. 

In Florence I had the pleasure of seeing Ball's statue 
of Governor Andrew. It is very successful and life-like, 
and I think it will please and satisfy all who are most 
interested, and that is saying a great deal. 



204 BOSTON DAYS 



I am glad to hear that you, also, are engaged upon a 
statue of the noble Governor, though in a different style 
and material. '' 

May all success attend your labors. This is the hearty 
wish and also the firm belief of 

Yours truly, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

Letters from Dr. Holmes attest the gratitude he felt 
to Mr. Whipple for his subtle and stimulating criticism. 
Letters from Whittier note how, when, after publishing 
a poem which he doubted had claim to the name, he 
would be reassured by a letter from Mr. Whipple with 
its words of appreciation. Dr. Holmes always felt this 
strong realization of the sweet debt of gratitude due to 
Mr. Whipple, as dozens of his letters indicate. To the 
latest year of his life he always visited Mrs. Whipple on 
Christmas day, bringing his own gift, save for one year, 
when too ill to go out, he sent it, with one of his most 
charming letters and a great basket of English holly. 

At one time Mrs. Whipple sent him as a gift a nauti- 
lus, exquisitely mounted in silver, as a souvenir of his 
noblest poem, " The Chambered Nautilus," and in ac- 
knowledgment Dr. Holmes wrote : — 

January V, 1886. 
My dear Mrs. Whipple, — You must be in league 
with the Nereids and the Gnomes, who despoil their 
cabinets to furnish you with precious objects of the 
rarest beauty to furnish you with gifts for your friends. 
I do not know how to thank you for this new and beauti- 
ful token of your kind remembrance. The nautilus is the 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 205 

finest specimen I have ever seen. It is always before my 
eyes to remind me of your friendship. If I can find a 
place in my simple costume for the pin which bears the 
lovely anemonite, it shall go next my heart. 

With heartfelt thanks for the exquisite New Year's gift, 
the beauty and interest of which are quite captivating, but 
which is made still more lovely by the feeling which 
prompted you to send it, I am, my dear Mrs. Whipple, 
Always faithfully yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Kindest regards and a happy New Year to you both. 

"When Hawthorne was first struggling with his genius 
and his poverty, Mr. Fields and ]Mr. "Whipple took 
counsel together, the result of which was that j\lr. 
Fields made a journey to Salem to see Hawthorne and 
propose to him to publish a novel which he had written 
and which proved to be " The Scarlet Letter." From 
that time Hawthorne's fame and fortune were assured. 

To the Whipples Louisa Alcott owed her first definite 
encouragement in literary work. There are no words 
to estimate the value, in a community of literary 
workers and aspirers, of a home that radiated such 
discriminating encouragement as the criticism and fine 
recognition that went out from both INIr. and Mrs. 
Whipple. It was one of the most potent factors in 
the golden age of American literature. 

Mr. Whipple's gift of swift recognition of excellence 
was a potent factor in the literary development of all 
these earlier years. Di*. Holmes recognized it in a note 
which, in his later life, he wrote to accompany a review 



206 BOSTON DAYS 



of Mr. Whipple's work which he had written, and the 
note runs thus : — 

296 Beacon St., May 15, 1882. 
My dear Whipple, — The first criticism that revealed 
to me at once Emerson and yourself was one that in the 
multitude of your writings you may have forgotten. I 
do not pay any debt in sending you mine, but a small per 
cent of it. Always truly yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Mr. Whipple developed literary criticism to a signifi- 
cance heretofore unknown in our country. With him it 
was the supreme work of his life. All that force and 
vividness and keen insight and creative power that 
might have poured itself in various other literary 
channels was concentrated in his criticism. In his 
hands it became indeed a fine art. True criticism 
is creation, not disintegration, and this truth is signally 
illustrated in Mr. Whipple's writings. His books are 
an immense force, a vast and stimulating positive power, 
and are thus among the great aids to character- 
building. 

The complete collection of his works offers a mine of 
literature that is a mine of thought as well. His essays 
fill nine volumes, and they are comprehensive in their 
inclusion of biography, reminiscence, and comment. 
Then, too, Mr. Whipple's life was lived in the very 
heart of the most interesting literary period of America, 
and his was the impressionable temperament to take 
swift account and unconscious mental record that later 
recorded itself in his exquisite and forcible English. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 207 

" Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliancy of diction 
and graphic portraiture," wrote Whittier of Whipple, 
"he was freer from prejudice and passion and more 
loyal to the truth of fact and history. He was a 
thoroughly honest man. He wrote with conscience 
always at his elbow and never sacrificed his real con- 
victions for the sake of epigram and antithesis. He 
instinctively took the right side of the questions that 
came before him for decision even when by so doing he 
ranked himself with the unpopular minority. He had 
the manliest hatred of hypocrisy and meanness ; but if 
his language had at the time the severity of justice, it 
was never merciless. Never blind to faults, he had a 
quick and sympathetic eye for any real excellence or 
evidence of reserved strength in the author under dis- 
cussion. He was a modest man, sinking his own 
personality out of sight, and he always seemed to be 
more interested in the success of others than in his 
own." 

The collected works of Mr. Whipple form a unique 
and permanent feature of American literature. They 
offer a feast of intellect — a kind of splendid celebration 
of genius in all its phases — literary, political, philan- 
thropic, and scientific. He has written of the Eliza- 
bethan literature, of Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, the 
group of minor dramatists, of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Massinger and Ford, of Spenser and the group of minor 
Elizabethan poets, of Sidney and of Raleigh, Bacon, 
and Hooker, — a volume which is held as one of the 
critical authorities in university study and literary 



208 BOSTON DAYS 



societies ; a volume that will give any careful reader 
a clear grasp and wide knowledge of all the influences 
and achievements of the poets and dramatists of this 
period. An interesting letter from George William 
Curtis, though undated, must have been written about 
this : — 

Many thanks, dear Mr. Whipple, for the omitted 

portions of your article, which I return as you requested. 

They are sharp enough, and tickle my heart most mightily. 

I shall look forward to reading the article when it comes 

out, which will be somewhere in the middle of this month. 

I suppose that I never stayed my tongue or my pen from 

vituperation, or my mind from a wholesome condemnation 

that I did not know justice to be more pleased, but it is 

very much temperament, I suppose, as so many virtues 

are. We cannot spread our plumage in consequence. 

Good bye, 

Yours very truly, 

George William Curtis. 

In the two volumes of " Essays and Reviews " Mr. 
Whipple discusses Macaulay, Wordsworth, Byron, 
Shelley, Scott, Coleridge, Keats, Elizabeth Browning, 
and Tennyson ; Daniel Webster, the American poets, 
Rufus Choate, Prescott, Fielding, the British critics and 
the elder dramatists ; in his " Recollections of Eminent 
Men" are portrayed with the vividness of the vie 
iniime Agassiz, Motley, Emerson, Sumner, George, 
Ticknor, and Matthew Arnold. In this volume, too, is 
Mr. Whipple's great critique on "Daniel Deronda" 
and his famous paper on " George Eliot's Private Life." 
He writes of his familiar friend, Thomas Starr King, as 




Echvhi P. IVhippJe 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 209 

no one else has ever done, giving an interpretation of 
his character and gifts, and in other volumes he dis- 
cusses such topics as " Intellectual Health and Disease," 
" Genius," '' The Ludicrous Side of Life," " The Sale of 
Souls," " The Ethics of Popularity," and contrasts the 
English and American mind. In a paper on ^' Cliarac- 
ter " we find Mr. Whipple saying : " Character indicates 
the degree in which a man possesses creative spiritual 
energy ; it is the exact measure of his real ability ; is, 
in short, the expression of the man." And again we 
find this epigrammatic sentence : — 

"The great danger of the conservative is his tempta- 
tion to surrender character and trust in habits ; the great 
danger of the radical is his temptation to discard habits 
without forming character. One is liable to mental 
apathy, the other to mental anarcliy ; and apathy and 
anarchy are equally destitute of causative force and essen- 
tial individuality." 

Edwin Percy Whipple was born in Gloucester, Mass., 
in 1819, and died at his home in Pinckney Street, 
Boston, in 1886. Gloucester is a town of some fifty 
thousand inhabitants, on the north shore, thirty miles 
from Boston, and has always been known as a centre of 
intelligence and standard worth. Coming to Boston in 
his early youth, Mr. Whipple met and married Charlotte 
Hastings, a woman of noble gifts of mind and heart, 
of great intellectual force, of exquisite culture, of 
a rare balance of discrimination and sympathy, and a 
most accomplished woman of letters and of society. It 

14 



210 BOSTON DAYS 



was a beautiful wedded life, a true spiritual marriage. 
Never did man or woman more closely enter into each 
other's experiences, more perfectly sympathize with each 
other's unspoken thoughts and supplement each other's 
powers, than Edwin Percy and Charlotte (Hastings) 
Whipple. She gave to him that intellectual compre- 
hension which is the rarest gift of wedded life. She 
shared his readings, his meditations, his aspirations, his 
triumphs. The home of the Whipples was for thirty 
years one of the most brilliant social centres of Boston. 
Their " Sunday evenings " were noted gatherings, and 
have been more truly the salon than almost any other 
social entertainments in the city. Mrs. Whipple's rare 
tact and grace, her vigorous intellectual power, her 
artistic skill in social groupings, made these evenings 
the inflorescence of refined and intellectual social inter- 
course. In her parlors would gather such men and 
women as the Emersons, the Plawthornes, Longfellow, 
Sumner, Rufus Choate, Agassiz, Dr. Holmes, Benjamin 
Peirce, the Alcotts, Dr. and Mrs. Howe, Starr King, 
Whittier, Colonel Higginson, Helen Hunt, and many an- 
other. No foreign celebrity visiting Boston found his 
stay complete without a visit to the Whipples, and this 
not by the attractions of luxury, the elaborate pomp of 
ceremonial splendor ; not by " gold and white " dinners 
and " pink " lunches, and elaborate receptions in rooms 
filled with an unmeaning crowd ; but by the simple and 
exquisite grouping of men and women who were simple, 
noble, gifted, and sincere ; who stood for something in 
the world. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 211 

The home of tlie Whipples, where Mrs. Whipple still 
lives, is a modest three-story brick house witli plain 
square windows and old-fashioned entrance. From the 
hall open two parlors, which have been the scenes of 
those famous and brilliant Sunday evenings. Back of 
these is the library, well stored with volumes which 
look as if they had been the every-day property of 
a book-loving household. The house is within two 
minutes' walk of the State House and of the Athenaeum 
Library, of which Mr. Whipple was an habitue. He 
was an omnivorous reader and absorbed a book, as it 
were, on the moment. He often changed the book on 
his card twice in one day. In the brilliant circle of 
men in which Mr. Whipple stood, his place was unique 
and strongly individual. His was a brilliant, electric 
nature, scintillating with wit and swift flashes of rep- 
artee ; instantly responsive, full of dramatic sympathy 
and play of imagination. Mr. Whipple's presence was 
an embodied inspiration, and his qualities were the key 
that unlocked natures widely different from his own 
and from each other. The mystic serenity of Emerson, 
the genial sweetness of Longfellow, the sombre, imagi- 
native isolation of Hawthorne, were all responsive to 
this keen, brilliant mind, whose insight and power made 
it the remarkable force it was in American literature, 
and he thus became inseparably identified with our 
noblest period of letters. No purely creative genius for 
romance or poetry has been a more important factor in 
the development and progress of our national culture. 
For the critic, as the poet, is born and not made, and 



212 BOSTON DAYS 



our great critics arc even fewer and more rare than 
are our great poets. He had, for literary criticism, a 
positive genius. He brought to it the noblest and truest 
qualities, — those of swift spiritual insight, — an insight 
so keen that it was a species of mental clairvoyance, a 
most sensitively delicate and appreciative apprehension, 
and a power of dramatic sympathy that has seldom 
been equalled in any literature. His great critique on 
" Daniel Deronda " was as if a magnifying glass had 
been placed above those complex human motives and 
passions which George Eliot so marvellously dramatized, 
and we were invited to approach and behold them. It 
was a criticism that elicited profound gratitude from 
George Eliot and Mr. Lewes, that gratitude felt by the 
great mind to one who enters into its work and recog- 
nizes it truly. It is not easy to estimate the influence 
on a young school of literature of such a mind as this. 
Acute, analytical, swift to recognize and foster genuine 
merit, or to check that which was superficial and false, 
Edwin P. Whipple was an elemental power. He 
entered into real relations with men. Starr King, 
George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Bayard 
Taylor, were among the friends and comrades of his 
young manhood. His reminiscences of those days scin- 
tillated with glancing wit and irresistible picturing. 

There was a movement on the part of Charles Sumner 
and other friends to give Mr. Whipple the degree of 
LL.D. from Harvard, — less common then than now, — 
and this letter from Edward Everett (then President of 
Harvard) to Mr. Sunnier refers to the matter : — 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 213 

Cambridge, July 21, 1847. 

Dear Sumner, — Yours of the 19th reached me yester- 
day. I consider Mr. Whipple fully entitled to the degree 
of A. M. Mrs. Sydney Smith told me she thought his 
article on her husband the most just she had read. I fear 
it is too late to make the arrangement this year. The 
overseers meet to-morrow to receive the proposal of 
candidates for honorary degrees. One special meeting of 
the corporation having been already called this month, I 
should hardly have ventured to try to gather them from 
their dispersion at their dinners for another extra meeting 
to-day. Indeed, I suppose it would have been impossible 
to convene them. The overseers meet thus early because 
they are requested by a standing rule of their body to hold 
all questions of honorary degrees under advisement for 
thirty days. 

I am, dear sir, with much regard, 

Sincerely yours, 

Edward Everett. 
To Charles Sumner. 

If, as Emerson has said, " nothing is secure but the 
energizing spirit," this spirit depends on that intense 
form of energy generated by mutual sympathy and 
recognition and love, as unfailingly as electricity is 
generated by a dynamo. The liberation of spirit that 
thus manifests itself in an affluence of poetry and 
romance was its power to the force generated by that 
mutual sympathy which in the Boston group continually 
expressed itself in copious correspondence, and in the 
verse of occasion that perpetually made festa of birth- 
days, arrivals, and departures, and that poured its con- 
solation and uplifting prayers when death and sorrow 



214 BOSTON DAYS 



invaded this choice circle and invested the transition 
with that light which Dante saw. The union of the 
closest sympathies of social intimacy and the power of 
poetic expression in the gifted group is remarkable. 
Emerson once said to Miss Peabody, " I am not a great 
poet, but whatever there is of me is a poet ; " and this 
temperament — which is always that of the finer insight, 
the swift sensitive perception, the vital response, — is 
marked among all his circle. 

" 'T is the most difficult of tasks to keep 

Heights which the soul is competent to gain," 

says Wordsworth, but the Boston literati of the age 
when all the air was fame apparently dwelt habitually 
on the heights. 

Mr, Whipple was a very genial letter-writer, and to a 
friend who had sent him a birthday token he wrote : 

Boston, April 20, 1885. 
Dear : I trust you will not consider m}' non- 
acknowledgment of your birthday gift when I approached 
the mature age of sixty-six as any sign that I was insen- 
sible to your kindness and attention. It was my only gift 
on the occasion of the 8th of March, but the truth is, that 
when I awoke on the 9th of March and saw your bloom- 
ing daffodils I found that a chill I had taken the day or 
two before had doomed me to a month's illness. I recog- 
nized the appropriateness of your present ; for who can 
ever forget the lines, 

" Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty." 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 215 

But then, you know, the winds of this March blew 
from some Scandinavian Inferno, and for a fortnight my 
strength withered as fast as the flowers, and lettei'-writiug 
was impossible. 

I write now with a new cold, spitefully added to the old, 
to thank you most cordially for your kindly remembrance. 
The root from which the flowers grew is still vital, and 
will flower again when I am more capable of expressing 
my pleasure in the beauty of your gift. 

Mrs. Whipple, I need not say, joins me in all good 
wishes, and I remain, as ever. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Edwin P. Whipple. 

Mr. Whipple struck the keynote of his literary work 
by a paper on Macaulay which appeared in the *' Boston 
Miscellany" in February, 1843. English essayists read 
this criticism from a new and unknown hand with 
surprise and admiration, and Macaulay himself wrote to 
the young critic an appreciative and complimentary 
letter. His future was now determined. At twenty- 
four years of age this young man, whose education had 
been the keen absorbing of miscellaneous opportunities 
rather than the regulation training of academic life, was 
fairly launched upon a tide of work than which none 
was more needed in a new and growing country, and 
for which no one had his peculiar fitness. 

When Mr. Whipple's book entitled " Success and its 
Conditions," first appeared, Kate Field wrote a notable 
critique on it, saying that the book is one to conjure 
with, and that among all the brilliant galaxy of the 
Boston authors of the golden age Mr. Whipple stands 



216 BOSTON DAYS 



as the most earnest and unassuming of men. One must 
dig him out of his shell, she continued, to find the rich 
kernel of head and heart that are always true to prin- 
ciples and friends, always generous to brother authors, 
always just to political adversaries. None but a true 
man could have written his fine prose poem on " Jeanne 
d'Arc," Possessing a terse, vigorous style, critical acu- 
men, a richly stored mind, and intellectual integrity, 
continued Miss Field, Edwin P. Whipple is thoroughly 
competent to handle any subject he touches. It is the 
divine fire of youth's enthusiasm and illuminates the 
world, and he is right in declaring that " wherever we 
mark a great movement of humanity we commonly 
detect a young man at its head or at its heart." 

There was an atmosphere of sympathy in that home 
on Pinckney Street where the Whipples kept their altar 
fire burning, to which all tlie galaxy of this golden age 
constantly turned. The genial humor of the perpetual 
letter-writing of the day reveals itself in this note from 
the great astronomer, Professor Peirce, enclosing tickets 
to his own course of lectures before the Lowell Institute : 

Cambridge, 1879. 
My dear Whipple, — I should not have expected such 
an indiscreet promise from so wise a man and the hus- 
band of so wise a woman, but in hopes to lighten the 
burden of admiration which you have carelessly awarded, 
I enclose three tickets. May some good fortune assist 
you to some friend of weak intellect who may relieve you 
of your responsibility. With kindest regards to Mrs. 
Whipple, I am Ever your sincere friend, 

Benjamin Peirce, 



/t 



296.Be«oon Street. ^-/(J^-?^ . /'^ 



y/^'^ /'^'TtZ^ ^'z^*^..^ ^^r^<^,_^^ ^>^A^^^^i::^i^^ 



' //^"^^ ^'^'^^^,/^JL >^^-*-k^ >W^ 




<^^^A..^>^^^ ^^tz^ ^^'■^-^-^^<- ^-^^^^-^ ^^:^ 



A^^^-'-^Tx^^iyi-^-iy^ 






THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 217 

When Dr. Holmes had finished his brilliant and 
powerful work, " A Mortal Antipathy," to an appreci- 
ative word of Mr. Whipple's he thus replied : — 

November 23, 1885. 

My dear Whipple, — I have twenty-two letters before 
me with " immediate " marked on the margin, but I mast 
write a line to thank you for your most welcome and 
generous letter. I needed a kind word from a friend 
whose judgment I could rely upon, and I have it. I was 
somewhat tired after finishing my memoir of Emerson, 
and plunged into this study as a soldier after the march 
goes head-first into a swift and cold current. I did not 
know whether it would chill me to death with the sudden 
change of temperature from a life history to a fiction, or 
dash me to pieces on the rock of impossibility, for I feared 
I could not make my gyration seem probable enough to 
interest anybody. 

The pleasant words of your letter and the approval of 
Mrs. Whipple as well as yourself have made this stormy 
day the sunniest I have seen for a long time. The mag- 
nificent nautilus Mrs. Whipple gave me is always before 
my eye and keeps her in ever fresh remembrance. 
I am, my dear Whipple, always yours, 

Oliver AVendell Holmes. 

Agaiu;, in another letter, referring to Emerson, Dr. 
Holmes writes : — 

December, 1883. 

My dear Whipple, — I am sorry that you have lost 
sight of your first article on Emerson. I think it was in 
the " Times " of that day that I saw the article that I was 
thinking of. I have a complete set of the " North Ameri- 
can Review " and Indices, so that I can lay my hands 



218 BOSTON DAYS 



at once on the two articles in that periodical. If you can 
spare or lend me a copy of the one in " Harper's" I shall 
be much pleased to receive it; but if not convenient, I 
will get it at the shops or from one of the other Public 
Libraries. I have never forgotten the impression your 
first article on Emerson produced on me, and I wish I 
could find it now. Faithfully yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

An interesting coincidence in comparing Emerson to 
Franklin that occurred between Dr. Holmes, Matthew 
Arnold, and Mr. Whipple is thus touched upon in a 
letter from Dr. Holmes : — 

296 Beacon St., Dec. 31, 1883. 

My dear Whipple, — A thousand thanks for your most 
interesting and valuable article on Emerson. To think 
I should have thought I was the first to couple Emerson 
with Franklin. My poem in the '• Atlantic " in which the 
conjunction occurs was all printed and corrected before 
Matthew Arnold delivered the lecture in which he married 
the two names, and now it seems that we were both 
jump-up-behinders. 

Well, I was honest, and no doubt he was. I can only 
claim that I put a pair of wings on the old gentleman 
who was a rather heavy cherub. I have no doubt we steal 
(conscientiously) a great deal more from each other than 
we are aware of. You, at any rate, have furnished more 
people with good printable notions than you will ever get 
credit for, and I have no doubt that before I get through 
with Emerson I shall innocently borrow so much from 
you that if my pockets were turned inside out you could 
find a whole scrap-bag full of your own property. 
Always faithful!}', 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 219 

All amusing little story of Mrs. Stowe belongs to 
these days. It seems that a dame of high degree who 
lived in Arlington Street which was called then " very 
far out," was to give a grand reception for Mrs. Fanny 
Kemble. Mrs. Stowe had come in town from some 
outlying place, — Andover, perhaps, — to pass the day 
with Mrs. Fields, who invited her guest to remain and 
go with her to the festivity. Mrs. Stowe made some 
objection regarding her little black gown as not being 
suitable, which Mrs. Fields overruled with the promise 
of some of her own laces and adornments, and Mrs. 
Stowe, who never thought twice of her clothes, accepted 
the suggestion and remained. 

The evening came, and literary and fashionable 
Boston flocked to the drawing-rooms of the hostess, 
where Mrs. Kemble, in an elaborate costume of 
purple and silver brocade, was enthroned in the 
semi-royal state that was second nature to her. The 
guests were brought up and duly presented to the 
heroine of the fete, but Mrs. Stowe meantime had 
escaped to a quiet nook, where, with Edwin P. 
Whipple for an audience, she was deeply absorbed in 
recounting her experience with the Brownings, whom 
she had met many times in Europe, and with whom slie 
had enjoyed many interesting conversations. From time 
to time the hostess came up, as the hostess always 
feels it her duty to break up an absorbing Ute-a-Ute, 
and drag her victims to be presented to some stranger, 
but INIrs. Stowe refused to be interrupted, and the time 
sped by. Mrs. Kemble left early, and she and Mrs. 



220 BOSTON DAYS 



Stowe did not, therefore, meet at all. At last when the 
evening was over and the ladies were in the dressing-room 
putting on their wraps, Mrs. Stowe was asked by some 
one her impressions of Mrs. Kemble. " Why, was Mrs. 
Kemble here ? " she explained, having utterly forgotten 
the purpose for which Mrs. Fields had entreated her to 
remain. " I should have thought she would have asked 
to be presented to me ! " 

The naivete amused Mrs. Stowe's friends, for never 
was there a less conscious woman ; but she had just 
returned from Europe, where every one, from the 
crowned heads and the duchesses to the untitled, was 
anxious to meet her, and the impression remained on 
her mind. 

The Boston of those days dined at two o'clock 
and had "tea" at night. There was a leisure and, 
indeed, one must concede an elegance, too, of social 
life that had its choice quality. The reminiscences of 
the Boston whose social festivities were enriched by the 
presence and participation of Longfellow, Lowell, Emer- 
son, Professor Peirce, Motley, Starr King, and a host of 
others of gifts and rare quality are more and more 
interesting as they recede into a very definite past. 

Dr. Holmes was perhaps less apt to be found in purely 
social meetings than in the semi-ceremonial gatherings, 
and a note of his runs thus : — 

296 Beacon St., November 15. 
My dear Mrs. Whipple, — It was very kind in you to 
ask Mrs. Holmes and myself, but we are both very shy 
about going out evenings. I hope you had a pleasant 




Mr.1. Ediiin P. Whipple 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 221 

time, and know that you and Mr, "Whipple can never fail 
to find good company, as you will be sure to make it. 
Faithfully yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Prof. Benjamin Peirce was one of the most inti- 
mate of the choice circle that gathered around the 
Whipples. The great astronomer and scientist was 
identified with the Harvard Observatory over a long 
period of years, and he was not only a great scientist, 
but a great man ; one whose exaltation of nature made 
him one of the most important leaders in the advance- 
ment and elevation of human progress. His life stood, 
not only for achievement, but for the radiation of influ- 
ence. The quality of his genius was so lofty that one 
who comes now to approach him through his writings 
alone is amazed to find how incommensurate with his 
greatness is the general recognition. 

Professor Peirce was one of that remarkable galaxy 
of brilliant men born in New England during the first 
quarter of the century. His father, the elder Benjamin 
Peirce, had been a Harvard man before him, and was 
for many years the college librarian. His mother was 
a woman gently born and bred and of no little literary 
culture. Benjamin Peirce was born in Salem in 1809, 
almost contemporary with Dr. Holmes, and he gradu- 
ated from Harvard in 1829, James Freeman Clarke and 
Dr. Holmes being among his classmates. For some two 
years after this he was a teacher in the famous school 
for boys at Round Hill, Northampton, Mass., where 



222 BOSTON DAYS 



Motley passed his early school-days. In 1833 he was 
given a tutorship at Harvard, and soon afterward was 
made university professor of mathematics, and natural 
philosophy. In 1842 he was made the Perkins professor 
of astronomy and mathematics and he gave a service of 
fifty years to Harvard before his death in October of 
1880, in the seventy-second year of his age. 

This mere outline of facts and dates offers little sug- 
gestion of his lofty intelligence, his enthusiasm for 
wisdom, his impressive personal influence, and his 
insight into spiritual laws. It was the latter, indeed, 
that made his life and work so rich, and that invites 
contemplation. 

In his mathematical work Professor Peirce was held 
to rank with La Place and Euler. He extended the 
field of mathematical research. He infused into the 
science of numbers speculative vitality, imaginative 
power, and an artistic selection. In a series of text- 
books entitled, " Curves, Functions, and Forces," he 
made a permanent impression upon the methods of 
teaching all over the country. It is he who introduced 
infinitesimals into elementary mathematics, and thus 
even his text-books bear the stamp of his own personal 
force. He prepared the lunar tables for the nautical 
almanac of 1852. For the succeeding four years he 
was engaged in the investigation of the rings of Saturn, 
and he discovered and demonstrated that they were not 
solid, but fluid, and were sustained by the planet's 
satellites. Professor Peirce was engaged in the United 
States coast survey from 1867-/4. Among his books 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 223 

that followed this period are tliree that are singularly 
imbued with philosophic thought, although they are 
strictly mathematical and scientific works, dealing vari- 
ously with Mechanics, Physics, and with Morphology. 
While these are eminent hand-books for the specialist, 
they are also deeply fascinating to the general reader. 
" Every portion of the material universe," he says, " is 
pervaded by the same laws of mechanical action which 
are incorporated into the very constitution of the 
human mind." 

Honors and troops of friends attended his life. He 
received the degree of LL.D. both from the University 
of North Carolina and his own alma mater ; he was 
elected an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society 
in London, of the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of 
the Imperial University at St. Vladimir, and a member 
of the Royal societies of Edinburgh and Gottingen. It 
is an open question if any other of the great men of his 
time aroused such personal enthusiasm as did Professor 
Peirce, who was beloved to the point of an idolizing 
affection. He was so responsive, so sympathetic, and, 
above all, so inspiring. He stimulated the best in every 
one who came near him, and what more marvellous 
power can there be than this ? His sympathetic in- 
clusiveness of interests included pure literature, the 
drama, the opera, to a degree that on poem, or play, or 
lyric artist his criticism was almost equally valuable. 

One of the noblest sermons of Phillips Brooks is 
entitled " The Symmetry of Life," in which he speaks 
of the length and breadth and height of life : the 



224 BOSTON DAYS 



length, ill the life of activity and thought and self- 
development ; the breadth, in that diffusive tendency 
which is always drawing a man outward into sympathy 
with other men, and the height — " in its reach upward 
toward God." And then, picturing ideal manhood, he 
emphasized the symmetry in these words : — 

" It must be that forever before each glorified spirit in the 
other life there shall be set one goal of peculiar ambition, 
his goal, after which he is peculiarly to strive, the struggle 
after which is to make his eternal life to be forever dif- 
ferent from every other among all the hosts of heaven. 
And yet it must be that as each soul strives toward his 
own attainment he shall be knit forever into closer and 
closer union with all the other countless souls which are 
striving after theirs. And the inspiring power of it all, 
the source of all the energy and all the love, must then 
be clear beyond all doubt; the ceaseless flood of light 
forever pouring forth from the self-living God to fill and 
feed the open lives of his redeemed who live by him. 
There is the symmetry of manhood perfect. There, in 
redeemed and glorified human nature, is the true heavenly 
Jerusalem." 

This ideal suggests the realization of Professor Peirce . 
Strong in his own personal work and aims, broad in his 
sympathies with his fellow-men, and ever and always 
aspiring toward the divine, — what wonder that his life 
leaves an influence that is destined to extend still more 
widely. It was good for all to be brought in touch 
with such a man. Rev. Dr. Bartol says of him that he 
belonged to the same class of minds as Newton, Kepler, 
Swedenborg, and Plato. His books are characterized 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 225 

by work involving such profound thought, sucli mar- 
vellously speculative apprehension of divine laws, that 
they open to the reader undreamed vistas of spiritual 
life. 

With any reminiscence of Dr. Peirce must be asso- 
ciated the memorial poem written of him by Dr. Holmes, 
— a poem singularly full of intimations of the sublimity 
of the heavens : — 

" For biiii the Architect of all 
• Unroofed an planet's star-lit ball ; 

Through voids unknown to worlds unseen 
His clearer vision i-ose serene. 

*' With us on earth he walked by day ; 
His midnight path, how far away ! 
We knew him not so well who knew 
The patient eyes his soul looked through. 

" To him the wandering stars revealed 
The secrets in their cradle sealed." 

It was an event in the history of progress when 
Professor Peirce delivered, before the Lowell Institute, 
in 1877-78, a course of lectures on " Ideality in 
Science," which he afterward repeated before the 
Peabody Institute in Baltimore. In the opening one 
he says of the computation of the geometer that, " how- 
ever tedious it may be, it has a loftier aspiration. It 
provides spiritual nourishment ; hence it is life itself, 
and is the worthy occupation of an immortal soul." 

These lectures were fortunately published in a vol- 
ume (" Ideality in Science "), so that they are readily 
accessible. What a wonderful passage is this ! — 

15 



226 BOSTON DAYS 



" What is this which Ave call fact ? It is not a sound ; 
it is not a star. It is sound heard by the ear ; it is a star 
seen by the eye. In the simplest case it is the spiritual 
recognition of material existence. . . . There are even 
physical facts of which the knowledge is wholly mental 
and of which there is no direct evidence to the senses. 
It is undoubted that there are sounds which are inaudible 
to some ears and colors which are invisible to certain 
eyes. It is equally undoubted that there are innumerable 
vibrations coursing through space which make no sensi- 
ble impression on any auditory or visual organ, or on any 
human nerve. Such facts, known through our powers of 
reasoning, are to us non-existent, except as pictures on 
the imagination." 

And again : — 

" What is man? What a strange union of matter and 
mind ! A machine for converting material into spiritual 
force. A soul imprisoned in a body ! . . . The body is 
the vocal instrument through which tlie soul communicates 
with other souls, with its past self, and even, perhaps, 
with its Grod. Were the communication between soul and 
soul direct and immediate there would be no protec- 
tion for thought; and there would be no such thing as 
personality and individuality. The body is needed to 
hold souls apart and to preserve their independence as 
well as for conversation and mutual sympathy. Hence 
body and matter are essential to man's true existence. 
The soul that leaves this earthly body still requires in- 
corporation. The grandest philosopher who has ever 
speculated upon this theme has told us that there are 
celestial bodies as weU as bodies terrestrial." 

Such a voice is not silenced by death, and the work 
aud influence of Professor Pcirce are constantly widening. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 227 

The interblending of the little coteries and groups of 
the choice spirits that made the golden age of American 
literature is interesting to note. Lowell and Long- 
fellow were neighbors and friends in Cambridge ; there, 
too, lived Charles Eliot Norton, who, of all Lowell's 
circle, was the nearest to the poet, as Sumner was to 
Longfellow ; Emerson and Alcott, closely conjoined, not 
merely by locale, for social sympathies know nothing of 
geographical relations, but by ties of spirit ; Dr. Holmes 
and James Freeman Clarke in responsive accord ; and 
with all these and others, in harmonious mutual blend- 
ing, Mr. Whipple was intimately associated as critic and 
friend. 

The most important literary event in the last half of 
the Nineteenth century was the founding of the " At- 
lantic Monthly," which was christened by Dr. Holmes. 

The new periodical, first seen as in vision by Mr. 
Francis Henry Underwood — the literary adviser for the 
publishing house of Phillips and Sampson in Boston — 
was suggested by Mr. Underwood to the publishing 
house. The idea incited the sympathy of Mr. Phillips 
and he resolved to give a dinner at the Parker House 
(on May 5, 1857) to consult the writers on whom the 
project must chiefly rely for a corps of contributors. 
The guests invited were Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, 
Motley, Dr. Holmes, Whipple, and J. Eliot Cabot, — a 
"brilliant constellation of philosophic, poetic, and his- 
torical talent," as Mr. Underwood recorded. Mrs. 
Stowe's co-operation was immediately sought. Her 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " had been published in 1853, and 



228 BOSTON DAYS 



" Dred " was at this time about being issued. Her 
story called "Tlie Minister's Wooing" opened in the 
" Atlantic " in December of 1858. Mr. Lowell ac- 
cepted the editorship ; and when Emerson inquired as 
to whether the contributions were to be signed, Mr. 
Lowell replied in the negative but added: "You will 
be quite helpless, for your name is written in all kinds 
of self-betraying anagrams all over yours." 

The initial number of the new magazine which was 
destined to inaugurate an era in American literature and 
which has always kept faith with its high ideals, was 
enriched with four poems of Emerson's, — " Bralima," 
"Days," "The Romany Girl," and "The Chartist's 
Complaint." It seems that this group was sent in order 
that Mr. Lowell might select one from them ; but he 
published all and said, "I will never be so rapacious 
again till I have another so good a chance." 

Mr. Scudder in his biography of Mr. Lowell notes that 
of all these poems it was " Brahma " that seized upon 
the imagination, and he quotes Mr. Trowbridge as say- 
ing that it was " more talked about and puzzled over 
and parodied than any other poem of sixteen lines 
published within my recollection." Lowell himself 
said of this poem that the line, — 

" When me tliey fly I am the wingd ; " 

" abides with me as an intimate," and that " meaning is 
crammed into it as with an hydraulic press." The initial 
number of the " Atlantic " was also made memorable 
by containing Mr. Whittier's "Tritonius," and in 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 229 

the second number appeared " Skipper Ireson's Ride." 
Later came the serial publication of that inimitable 
creation by Dr. Holmes, " The Professor at the Break- 
fast Table," followed by " The Poet at the Breakfast 
Table." Colonel Higginson contributed prose romance 
and poems ; Richard Grant White first published in the 
"Atlantic" his Shakspeariau criticism; Mr. Lowell's 
"The Biglow Papers " first appeared in the " Atlantic ; " 
Harriet Prescott (later Mrs. Spofford) arrested atten- 
tion with her story " In a Cellar ; " and poems from 
Longfellow, essays and criticism by Mr. Whipple, and a 
story called " Pink and Blue " by Abby Morton Diaz 
contributed to the blaze of glory with which the new 
venture was invested. 

In 1861 Mr. James T. Fields succeeded Mr. Lowell 
as the editor of the new magazine. 

About the time of the founding of the " Atlantic 
Monthly " there was inaugurated the " Saturday Club," 
among whose members were Emerson, Hawthorne, 
Longfellow, Motley, Whipple, Whittier, Agassiz, Prof. 
Benjamin Peirce, Sumner, R. H. Dana, Dr. Holmes, 
Governor Andrew, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry James 
(the elder), James Freeman Clarke, Judge Hoar, Pres- 
cott, and later still. President Eliot, Howells, Aldrich, 
and Phillips Brooks. The scoffers — for there always is 
a scoffer — termed this club " The Mutual Admiration 
Society," to which Dr. Holmes retorted that " if there 
was not a certain amount of mutual admiration, it was 
a great pity and implied a defect in the nature of men 
who were otherwise largely endowed." 



230 BOSTON DAYS 



The poems and essays of Emerson continued to 
appear frequently in the " Atlantic ; " and regarding a 
paper by Mr. Whipple — which Cornelius Conway Felton 
of Harvard mistook for one of Emerson's, — Professor 
Felton wrote to Emerson as follows : — 

Cambridge, April 21, 1858. 
My dear Mr. Emerson, — I have this moment read 
an article in the '"Atlantic" which is attributed I presume 
truly to you, on " Intellectual Character," and while the 
impression of its admii-able depth, style, reasoning, and 
purport is fresh upon me, I want to express to you my 
thanks for it and my sense of the importance, the un- 
speakable importance, of the principles it develops. I 
wish the article could be printed as a hand-book — a 
revised pamphlet — and a copy of it placed in the hands 
of every student in every college, and in that of every 
man and woman, — the great college of society. I do 
not know that I have ever read an essay which contained 
more sound, healthy, practical truth tersely expressed. 
It will benefit minds of every stage and every age. I 
have just turned the half-century corner and I feel that 
I may apply its philosophy for the future ; and if I had 
fallen in with a similar exposition of such a doctrine 
thirty years ago I should have had thirty more years of 
intellectual benefit. One of the consolations of a long and 
tedious but not utterly disabling illness such as I have just 
been passing through is that it gives one freedom and time 
to read, pause, and inwardly digest (when one can digest 
little else) portions of the great masters of thought, — an 
essay of Bacon, — a tragedy of ^schylus, — the sixth 
and twenty-fourth books of the Iliad, — a passage from 
Montaigne, a canto of Dante, an Introduction of Agassiz, 
or such a paper as " Intellectual Character." 




^ /^t.e^Wl/^ /f^o 



/d ^d€4r»^^ /r^^^^^-^^^^^^ if^ 





/ Xc /^^^t-Z^^i^c^ 



Jk — 








/^ 







^ir''X.c^.-*f^^ ^feU^ 



/ 







A-z^^ <^^^»-7^-?t^ f/i-t:^- 











^J^'^'*^ C<rt^^.Ci7. 




C^* /W- /T^T^rt-T.^ 




THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 231 

I wish I could have heard your lecture, but I was uot 
well enough at the time. I set out soon for Athens to 
renew my personal acquaintance with the Parthenon, 
Propylaeum, Mars Hill, the Prison of Socrates, the 
Beacon of Demosthenes, the University of Athens and 
its professors, — in the leafy mouth of June. Can I do 
anything for you in the beloved city of Athenia ? 
Ever truly yours, 

Cornelius C. Felton. 

Mr. Emerson immediately sent this letter to Mr. 
Whipple with an accompanying note of his own which 
thus runs : — 

Concord, April 22, 1858. 

My dear Whipple, — I found at home to-day a rare 
compliment, a letter from the Greek professor in Harvard 
University, perhaps the first letter I ever had from him, 
full of praises of something of mine. You may well sup- 
pose my old eyes were a little dazzled and could not make 
out anything distinctly, but that I had written something 
singularly good to extort such commendation. 

But pride promptly came down, and as soon as my eyes 
cleared a little from this glory, and I could make out the 
words clearly, it was all a eulogy, — very just and true, 
be sure, — but of your article, not mine. So I send you 
the letter, and if your eyes are dim Mrs. Whipple shall 
read it to you. Not to lose all the benefit, I hastened 
to get the "Atlantic" which I had not read, and have 
read the paper myself, and I think the professor's ad- 
miration is honorable to him and to you, and when you 
have done as he bids you I will subscribe for twenty-five 
copies. 

Yours faithfully, 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



232 BOSTON DAYS 



The home of Emerson was at this time a most hos- 
pitable centre of social life. 

" Happy places have grown holy ; if we go where once we went, 
Only tears will fall down slowly, as at solemn sacrament." 

These lines may suggest themselves now to one as he 
passes under the tall chestnut-trees that stand at the 
gateway of Emerson's home, and listens for a moment 
to the wind and the pine-trees above. The gate stands 
hospitably ajar and a flagstone path leads to the door. 
As it opens, one steps into a hall running the depth of 
the house, and notes hanging above the table an old 
picture of Ganymede. At the right a door opens into 
the study — his study — and one passes reverently across 
the threshold. The room remains in all respects as Mr. 
Emerson left it. For all token of absence he might well 
have stepped into the adjoining room. In the centre 
is a large table. It is piled with books. On one side 
lies the little blotting pad with sheets of paper, and by it 
a pen, and ink bottle. This is all the paraphernalia of 
Emerson's writing materials. No desk with its pigeon- 
holes of litter ; no array of "reference " books ; nothing 
of the usual machinery of the professional litterateur, and 
this absence of all literary mechanism impresses the \'isi- 
tor. Emerson had a habit of writing on half-sheets of 
paper, letting them fall on the floor until they covered it 
like snowflakes. It was in this manner that the " Volun- 
taries " was written, one morning before brcakftist, 
when he was a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Fields, and on 
his asking them to come to his room and hear it, the 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 233 

poem was found on these scattered sheets all over the 
carpet. Mr. Emerson asked Mrs. Fields for a name for 
the poem, and she gave it the perfect title, "Volun- 
taries." It is in this poem that the immortal lines 
occur : — 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
So near to God is man, 
When duty whispers low, Hiou must, 
The youth replies, I can.'^ 

The absence of all literary mechanism impresses one 
with the peculiar spirituality of Emerson's message. 
Direct from heaven it seemed to fall on the white 
paper. No material medium interposed. He kept 
himself unencumbered by detail and free to receive 
spiritual impressions. The quality of his life permitted 
him to transmit and transcribe them. "My whole 
philosophy, which is very real," he once wrote, " teaches 
acquiescence and optimism. Sure I am that the right 
word will be spoken, though I cut out my tongue." In 
his discourse on Emerson Matthew Arnold felicitously 
said : " Happiness in labor, righteousness, and veracity ; 
in all the life of the spirit, happiness and eternal hope ; 
that was Emerson's gospel. . . . But by his conviction 
that the life of the spirit is happiness, and by his hope 
that this life of the spirit will come more and more to 
be sanely understood, and to prevail and to work for 
happiness, — by this conviction and hope Emerson was 
great." These words depict the dignity, the serenity, 
and spiritual poise of Emerson's character. Over the 
low mantelpiece hangs a fine copy of Michael Angelo's 



234 BOSTON DAYS 



" Fates," a gift from Carljle, who wrote accompany- 
ing it : — 

... "I am sending a small memorial of me to your 
wife ; a poor print rolled about a bit of wood ; let her 
receive it graciously in defect of better. Properly it is 
my wife's memorial to your wife. It is to be hung up in 
the Concord drawing-room. The two households divided 
by wide seas are to understand always that they are 
united nevertheless." 

There is a curious old Egyptian idol, Chinese en- 
gravings on the walls, and busts of celebrated men 
stand here and there about the room. On either side 
the fireplace two doors open into the sunny south par- 
lor, where a crimson carpet gleams like a warm welcome, 
and window draperies of the same rich, warm color are 
swept back revealing the view of low hills crowned 
with pine-trees, far across the quiet meadows. All the 
landscape is in a minor key, still, unaccentuated, full of 
a peace that is not yet stagnation. In this room hangs 
the picture — an old Italian engraving of a sun-god — 
which was also a gift from Carlyle, — his marriage 
gift, to Mrs. Emerson. 

It bears on the back a slip of paper pasted on the 
boards, on which is written, in Carlyle's own handwriting, 
a little inscription. Something to the effect that this 
picture is for the lady of the Concord home, from one 
whose household will ever have cause to remember 
hers, and signed T. Carlyle. The visitor looks long and 
lingeringly at this choice token, and perchance in 
memory he finds some stray echoes of a letter which in 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 235 

1841 Carlyle wrote to Mrs. Emerson, saying to her : 
" You are an enthusiast ; make Arabian Nights out of 
dull, foggy London days ; with your beautiful female 
imagination shape burnished copper castles out of 
London fog. It is very beautiful of you, — nay, it is 
not foolish either, it is wise. . . . Your message shall 
reach Miss Martineau ; my Dame will send it in her 
first letter. The good Harriet is not well, but keeps a 
very courageous heart. She lives by the shore of the 
beautiful Northumbrian sea." It was out of this home 
that Emerson wrote to Carlyle, " Your rooms in 
America are waiting for you, and my wife is making 
ready a closet for Mrs. Carlyle." It was out of this 
home, too, that Miss Martineau wrote to Carlyle that 
Emerson was "the only man in America who had 
quietly sat himself down on a competency to follow his 
own path and do the work his own will prescribed for 
him." Carlyle tells this to Emerson, and says : " Pity 
that you were the only one ! but be one, nevertheless ; 
be the first and there will come a second and a third. 
It is a poor country where all men are sold to Mammon, 
and one can make nothing but railways and bursts of 
parliamentary eloquence." 

A beautiful portrait of Emerson's daughter Edith 
(Mrs. Forbes) hangs in the sunny parlor, the room in 
which social groups including almost every famous 
person who has visited America have gathered ; the 
room where the famous " conversations " were held, 
when Alcott and Margaret Fuller joined the circle. 

Dr. Holmes says of Emerson, in retrospective review 



236 BOSTON DAYS 



of his character and achievements, — that he '' shaped 
an ideal for the commonest life, he proposed an object 
to the humblest seeker after truth." No more perfect 
characterization was ever made. 

Dr. Holmes had the gift of insight to a degree so 
remarkable as to be fairly that of divination. He was, 
indeed, the most unique figure in American literature. 
He united wit and profundity, ideal and speculative 
power, and accurate and practical research, imaginative 
range and microscopic observation. He was a satirist 
without a sting, a scholar without pedantry, a polished 
man of the world without undue worldliness, a psy- 
chologist and a scientist, a poet whose keenest wit was 
allied to pathos. Brilliant and humorous as he was, he 
was as full of sympathy and tenderness ; and perhaps the 
one strongest element in his many-faceted character was 
his sweetness of nature. He was admired and praised ; 
but, better than all, he was beloved. 

Born in the Brahmin caste of New England, he was 
an aristocrat of the ideal order ; of the order that tests 
its life by noblesse oblige ; of the order whose pride is 
that which is too proud ever to stoop to anything 
ignoble. But if to go through eighty-five years con- 
tinually doing the kindest thing in tlic kindest way for 
the largest number of people, be democracy then he 
was an ideal democrat. His ancestry, birth, childhood, 
education, scientific and literary work, his many friends 
and the incidents of travel, have been told. But with 
all that lias been written, and much that has been 
so well written of Dr. Holmes, the real man has never 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 237 

been adequately interpreted to the general public. At 
the most, his biographies have presented external ap- 
pearances and surface indications. They have told of 
his outward life and of his stories, his essays, his poems ; 
that he was a poet, a wit, a celebrity. 

There was a depth to the nature of Dr. Holmes that 
has perhaps never been fully sounded, unless by some 
near friend who has not chronicled the record of his 
plummet line. His classmate and beloved friend, James 
Freeman Clarke ; Edwin P. Whipple, his most appre- 
ciative critic ; and Dr. Hale, whose interpretation of his 
life, and friends contributes one of the most brilliant 
chapters in literary history, — • were those who have 
seemed to most truly interpret Dr. Holmes. 

Between Lowell and Holmes there existed a very 
beautiful and sympathetic friendship, which found ex- 
pression in Mr. Lowell's poem written to him on his 
seventy-fifth birthday, that opens : — 

" Dear Wendell, why need count the years 
Since first your genius made me thrill, 
If what moved them to smiles or tears, 
Or both contending move me still ? 



" Ten years my senior ! When my name 
In Harvard's entrance book was writ, 
Her halls still echoed with the fame 
Of you, her poet and her wit. 

" Outlive us all ! Who else like you 

Could sift the seed-corn from our chaflF, 
And make us, with the pen we knew. 
Deathless, at least, in epitaph." 



238 BOSTON DAYS 



Auother stanza of this poem was fulfilled when all 
that was mortal of Holmes was laid in Mt. Auburn. 

" One air gave both their lease of breath ; 
The same paths lured our boyish feet. 
One earth will hold us safe in death 
With dust of saints and scholars sweet." 

The keynote to the character of Dr. Holmes, as 
revealed to his more intimate personal circle and never 
fairly translated into biographical record, is found in 
his intense interest in the mysterious problem of the 
relation between the soul and the body ; of the tran- 
substantiation of physical supplies into spiritual force. 
He was an evolutionist in a far wider and higher sense 
than that of Darwin, for his view of evolution con- 
templated the progress of the soul after leaving this 
body. That inscrutable link that holds body and soul 
in identity during life, and that being broken produces 
the change we call death, haunted his imagination. 
For this trend of his interest there was combined the 
intuition of the poet and the penetration of the scientist. 
He has been reported as an agnostic ; but this, in the 
usual sense of the term, is not true. He was a com- 
municant of King's Chapel (Unitarian), where he held 
a pew and was a constant attendant on divine service. 
With that twinkle in his eye that those who knew him 
in familiar intercourse so well remember, the Autocrat 
used to remark that the typical life of the Bostonian 
consisted in being born in Boston, graduating at 
Harvard, owning a pew in King's Chapel or in Trinity 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 239 

Church, and being finally buried in Mt. Auburn, His 
own life fulfilled this whimsical data. 

Dr. Holmes' familiarity with the works of the great 
philosophers, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Hegel, Hume, and 
others, led him to higher results in physics than tlie 
scientist usually attains. One problem that deeply 
interested him he expressed in these words : — 

"Are there any mental processes of which we are uu- 
couscious at the time, but which we recognize as having 
taken place by finding certain results in our minds ? " 

On this he quotes the opinion of Leibnitz and Des- 
cartes, and compares them with illustrations furnished 
by Maudsley, Abercrombie, Lecky, Sir John Herschel, 
Hamilton, Mill, and others. 

This problem of unconscious cerebration fascinated 
Dr. Holmes, and he constantly subjected it to many 
forms of test and inquir}'. In this paper he notes : 

" I was told within a week of a business man in Boston 
who, having an important question under consideration, 
had given it up for the time as too much for him. But 
he was conscious of an action going on in his brain which 
was so unusual and painful as to excite his apprehensions 
that he was threatened with palsy, or something of that 
sort. After some hours of this uneasiness his perplexity 
was all at once closed up by the natural solution of his 
doubt coming to him, — worked out, as he believed, in this 
obscure and troubled interval." 

Dr. Holmes has been called the " Poet of Occa- 
sions," but to what height he raised those occasions! 



240 BOSTON DAYS 



The last great one of his life which liaJ Holmes for its 
laureate was the celebration of the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of Harvard (from Nov. 5 to 8, 
inclusive, 1886), where among the speakers were Presi- 
dent Eliot, James Russell Lowell, Robert C. Winthrop, 
Judge Hoar, Professor Mandell Creigliton of Cambridge, 
England, George William Curtis, Alexander Agassiz, 
and there were sermons by Rev. Dr. Peabody and Rev. 
Dr. Phillips Brooks with the poem by Dr. Holmes. 

Dr. Holmes had made only two visits to Europe, as 
a student in 1833-35, and again in 1886, from April to 
August, of which his book, the famous "Hundred 
Days," is the record. He had never visited Chicago, 
nor the South, save as he went to Washington and 
thereabouts in his travels after his " Captain." On 
his last visit to Europe, he received his D. C. L. from 
Oxford, at which ceremonial some one from the galleries 
cried out : " Did he come in the ' One-Hoss Shay ' ? " 

The life of Dr. Holmes in his own city was one of 
genial good will and sunny gladness. He was one of 
the gods, the immortals, and as he trod the streets there 
were none too poor to do him reverence. 

There is an anecdote of Dr. Holmes full of humorous 
felicity. It seems that Rufus Choate was at one time 
engaged to give a lecture before Dartmouth College, 
and being ill, Dr. Holmes was asked to go in his 
place. The audience was greatly disappointed at the 
non-appearance of Choate. Dr. Holmes opened his 
address by saying that if the cataract of Niagara was to 
have been displayed there, but at the last moment the 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 241 

management had announced that the difficulties of 
transportation were such that they had decided, instead, 
to shoot a stream of water from a village fire engine, or, 
if a great meteoric display was expected, and, instead, a 
tallow candle lighted, he could enter into the feelings 
of those who came to witness these grand displays and 
found nothing. In a moment he had so charmed and 
amused his auditors that he held them captive through 
his entire address. 

To a friend who sent him flowers on one of his 
birthdays he wrote : " If the gardens were as full of 
roses as your heart is of kindness, there would be no 
room for the sidewalks." 

One day, in a long and intimate conversation, he 
related this curious experience. At dinner one night 
at his country house at Beverly, not long before, he 
was suddenly moved, apropos of nothing, to relate a 
very curious criminal case that he had not even thought 
of, so far as he knew, for forty years. When they left 
the dining-room and passed into the library it was found 
the mail had been delivered while they were at dinner, 
and lay on the table. Dr. Holmes opened a paper sent 
him by a friend in England, and, behold ! it contained 
the same story of the long-past crime that he had just 
been relating, revived in the newspaper and a friend in 
England had sent it, thinking it would interest him, 
from its curious character. "Now what," said Dr. 
Holmes, " put the story at that moment in my mind ? 
I suppose the spiritualists would say that a spirit read 
what was in the paper lying in another room and com- 

16 



242 BOSTON DAYS 



muuicated it to me. Or was it, possibly, my uncou- 
scious self that saw it and communicated it to the 
brain?" 

" Which do you think it was, Dr. Holmes ? " asked 
his guest, curious to hear his keen and subtle analysis 
of so strange an occurrence. " I have no theories," he 
replied ; " I only state facts." 

Dr. Holmes may be called the most typical Bostonian 
that the modern Athens has ever known. Not only in 
that his entire life of eighty-five years was spent in his 
native city, with the exception of two years of medical 
study in Paris, in his youth, and his famous trip of a 
"Hundred Days" abroad, in his later years, — but still 
more in that his temperament, his expression, were the 
very essence and elixir of that wit, polish, refinement ; 
of the keen, swift perception, the sympathetic response, 
and noble fibre that is peculiarly characteristic of 
Boston. Of course there are Bostonians and Bostonians, 
but one is now speaking of the " Brahmin" type. 

The temperament of Dr. Holmes was pre-eminently 
sympathetic in strength, not in weakness. He had the 
sympathy which is the supreme result of the finest 
mental qualities, of inherited intellect, of experience, of 
culture, of spiritual insight. And so, though he was 
not a statesman or a politician, or a reformer, or a 
diplomat ; nor a preacher or lecturer, he was the most 
critically sympathetic, the most sympathetically critical, 
with the men who stood for those things of any man 
tliat can be named. Never were two men more unlike 
in temperament than Holmes and Emerson ; yet it may 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 243 

be more than an open question if any of the tran- 
scendentalists could have begun to produce that vivid 
and well-proportioned picture of Emerson that Dr. 
Holmes has given us in his biography of him in the 
" American Men of Letters " series. 

Amid the group of authors that form the splendid 
literary galaxy of New England, no one required such 
plastic surface to impressions, on the part of a bio- 
grapher, as Dr. Holmes. His character was more 
elaborate, so to speak ; he was more versatile, more 
many-sided, than any one of the others. If not a 
spiritual seer, he knew perfectly what it was to be a 
spiritual seer, and he fully comprehended and sym- 
pathized with Emerson. He was in the same perfect 
harmony of sympathy with that pure and fervent ethical 
thinker, James Freeman Clarke. He beheld the 
universe and recognized its laws with his close friend 
and classmate. Prof. Benjamin Peirce, the great 
astronomer. Never did poetic expression more fitly 
and exquisitely embody a life than in the stanzas of 
Dr. Holmes on the death of Professor Peirce. Then, 
too, it must not be forgotten that beside being the 
poet, the literary man, the man in touch with ethical 
thought and spiritual problems. Dr. Holmes was the 
medical professor; a physician, a scientist, a savant; 
that his university lectures to medical students were 
given three or four times a week over a long series of 
years, and constituted, of themselves, enough to have 
filled the entire time of almost any man. With all 
these various channels of activity Dr. Holmes was 



244 BOSTON DAYS 



always in touch with social life ; always a man of the 
world, a man of affairs, a man of letters and of science. 
His metier was the life of refinement, ease, beauty. It 
was a requirement to him to have certain ceremonial 
elegances, to observe due forms and fitness. This 
quality in his temperament came evidently from his 
mother, and it is not uninteresting to trace, as we may, 
the sources of his brilliant and versatile gifts. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the son of Rev. Abiel 
Holmes, who graduated at Yale "with honor and a 
respectable part at commencement" in 1783. He 
married Mary, a daughter of Rev. Ezra Stiles, D.D., 
President of Yale College. The Rev. Abiel Holmes and 
his wife lived in Georgia — where he had a pastorate — 
until 1791, when he accepted the call from the First 
Congregational Church in Cambridge. Mrs. Holmes 
died, and in March, 1801, he married again, his second 
wife being Sarah Wendell, the only daughter of Honor- 
able Oliver Wendell of Boston. 

" Sarah Wendell," wrote Dr. Holmes, in later years 
of his mother, " was a lady bred in an entirely different 
atmosphere from that of the strait-laced puritanism." 

The second Mrs. Holmes (the mother of the " Auto- 
crat"), as the daughter of a prosperous merchant, brought 
a well-filled purse into the clerical household. Through 
her came the strain of Dutch ancestry, which always 
amused Dr. Holmes, and to which he often alluded. 
Through her, too, came that dash of brilliant vivacious- 
ness that so pre-eminently distinguished the Autocrat. 

Dr. Holmes was born on Aug. 29, 1809, in the "gam- 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 245 

brcl-roofed house " at Cambridge, Mass., and died in 
Boston on Oct. 7, 1894. He was fitted for college at 
Andover, graduated from Harvard in 1829, and later, as 
already noted, he went abroad for two years in Europe, 
from which he returned in December, 1835, and in the 
opening of 1836 set up his medical practice in Boston. 

Many letters written by him from Paris during his 
study abroad are inconsequential. There is the bright- 
ness and genial vivacity that always characterized him, 
there are some felicitous terms of expression, but the 
young student had not then entered very deeply into 
life. 

He was an interested and energetic student of medi- 
cine, and a keen and wide-awake observer, but he was 
not at that time a thinker or a student of thought. 
When such men as Horace Mann, Emerson, Sumner, 
and Wendell Phillips were looking introspectively into 
life, and were enthusiasts for the progress and develop- 
ment of humanity, Holmes was taking his life with ease 
and gayety, and saw it largely as a humorous spectacle. 
It is not, however, that he was the dilettante ; humor 
was in his temperament. WJiile not cast in heroic mould, 
he was to develop with a symmetrical harmony and sunni- 
ness of influence, which, in its own way, was to con- 
tribute largely to life. He had no affinities with gloom. 
Cheerfulness is a very sane thing, and Dr. Holmes was 
eminently sane. 

Dr. Holmes did not fall into the ethical or the refor- 
matory current with deep sympathy, but observed these 
phases of Boston life more as a spectator. This is to 



246 BOSTON DAYS 



say, he was in no wise a moralist or a reformer; but 
still, in his maturer years, as an analyst of moral states 
and the causes that lay behind them, — as a student of 
psychological relations and the assertions of heredity and 
the tyranny of temperament, — he has not his equal in 
science or in ethics. 

The years ran on. In 1840 Dr. Holmes married Miss 
Amelia Lee Jackson, a daughter of Hon. Charles Jack- 
son, of Boston. They set up their manage on Mont- 
gomery Place and there their three children — Oliver 
Wendell, Jr. (now Chief Justice Holmes), Amelia Lee 
(later Mrs. Turner Sargent), and Edward Jackson — 
were born. Mrs. Sargent was her father's companion 
during the famous "hundred days" in Europe. Her 
death in 1889 left him a lonely "last leaf" indeed. 
The younger son died in 1884, and Chief Justice 
Holmes, who bears his father's name, alone represents 
him. From Montgomery Place Dr. Holmes removed his 
household gods to Charles Street, where he lived for 
many years until the march of business drove him to 
seek another home, which he found on Beacon Street 
(No. 296) on the water side, the house in which lie 
lived until his death, and which his son has since 
occupied. "The water side of Beacon Street" has 
become almost a classic locality, and perhaps the placid 
Charles will yet come to be to future generations a 
classic Helicon. The view from the windows of the 
library of Dr. Holmes might well be embalmed in 
classic story. As if in compliment to the Autocrat, 
the river there broadened almost into a lake. Across 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 247 

it were seen the spires and roofs of adjacent towns, 
and when an opaline haze or a kind of fairy mist 
hung over the still water, the scene became Turueresque, 
and every chimney and spire seemed to take on the illu- 
sion of turret and tower. Among all the homes of 
authors, where was there so stately and so noble a 
library whose windows could command such an en- 
chanted scene ? Looking towards sunset across the 
river, one looked towards the college town. Unsur- 
passed was the view in its changeful loveliness, — never 
twice alike and always offering alluring vistas to a poet's 
imagination. It held the enchanted dreams of Venice. 
There might well come visions 

" Of May-days in whose morning air 
The dews were golden wine." 

And books ? Books were everywhere, of course. They 
lined the walls and grouped themselves in revolving 
cases at the side of the poet's desk. A generous desk 
it was, — that large solid table in the centre of the room 
and by it the poet's chair. In a room below hung the 
picture of " Dorothy Q.'" the picture on which one gazes 
with thankfulness that " those close shut lips " had not 
'' answered No " on one momentous occasion. A beauti- 
ful copy of the Sistine Madonna was on the wall, and the 
books all had a companionable air, as of books that are 
lived with, and confided in, and trusted. 

When " The Atlantic Monthly " was projected, with 
James Russell Lowell as its editor, Mr. Lowell insisted 
that Dr. Holmes should become a contributor. It was 



248 BOSTON DAYS 



by this means that he discovered himself. He was now 
in his forty-seventh year ; but he stood on the threshold 
in the dawn of the real work of his life. " The Auto- 
crat at the Breakfast Table " was the name chosen for 
the series of papers he began contributing. Their force 
and brilliancy and racy vitality took the reading public 
by storm. Unique, epigrammatic, spontaneous, the 
work captivated and has ever since held the lovers of 
literature. Later came "The Poet at the Breakfast 
Table," that marvellously psychological romance, " Elsie 
Venner," and the following story, hardly less intensely 
interesting in its mental analysis, — "The Guardian 
Angel." 

Among the extracts from his letters in those days is 
this, written to Motley, — the friend to whom, of all 
others, he was most deeply attached. Writing from 
Nahant, he says : — 

" I have dined since I have been here at Mr. George 
Peabody's with Longfellow, Sumner, Appleton, and William 
Amory ; at Cabot Lodge's with nearly the same company ; 
at Mr. James' with L. and S., and at Longfellow's en 
famille, pretty nearly. Very pleasant dinners. I wish 
you could have been at all of them. I find a singular 
charm in the society of Longfellow, a soft voice, a sweet 
and cheerful temper, a receptive rather than an aggres- 
sive intelligence, the agreeable flavor of scholarship with- 
out any pedantic ways, and a perceptible soupfon of 
humor, not enough to startle or surprise or keep you under 
the strain of overstimulation, which I am apt to feel with 
very witty people. Sumner seems to me to have less 
imagination, less sense of humor or wit, than almost any 
man of intellect I ever knew." 



^ /^■^Z^^^T^^'C^-^^.^A^^ y/^^.£,c^^^^-^c.i^c:? - 






j^a^^^ 



i^4:Hc^ ^^^^^ £6eJ^ A^ J^^et^z^ 
^^^t^ ^^^'^■^Z^ jf'^cu- /feAM.-^^^ >^X J'Ju^tt^-^^^ 



fZ/l^fU'^^U ^7n^ /^ /te^Z'^^'i!^^ /^-/T^^ /^^A^^ /^- 1 
//>^<^^^ <^.fi-^^o^ yZ<l./2^ tirCc.'C^ yZ^^T-fx^ ^ic/Z^,A /A^/st- ^^r^M^f 

o^j'T^L ^^^'y^^ J"ea.J^r?tj Zj^ / 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 249 

The one immortal work of Dr. Holmes in literature is 
"The Chambered Nautilus." This poem appeared in 
the fourth paper of the series of the " Autocrat," and it 
is one that will live as long as the English language 
endures. His own analysis of this poem incidentally 
given in the following letter acknowledging Mr. 
Whipple's felicitations on a later work is deeply 
interesting : — 

296 Beacon St., Nov. 16, 1880. 

Dear Mr. Whipple, — You cannot tell how much good 
your hearty note has done me. It was an act of true 
kindness to write it. I thought I might get a pleasant 
word from somebody or other (in addition to what 
Howells wrote when I sent him the poem), and now I have 
it and from one who knows what poetry is and would not 
praise carelessly. 

I confess I thought the poem in its own way one of the 
best I have ever written. I suppose a writer may greatly 
overrate his powers, but I do not think he is so like to be 
mistaken about the felicities of any particular effort, 
judged by the scale of his own merit, and I could not 
help feeling that I had expressed what I wanted to as 
I wanted to, and was content to send it about. 

I was reminded by your note very forcibly of one which 
the late Mrs. FoUen wrote me soon after the publication 
of " The Chambered Nautilus," which I have always con- 
sidered the most artistically finished of any of my poems. 
She said she had tried to alter some phrase or word and 
found she could not improve it. I was glad she did not 
suggest any change, for it had passed a pretty sharp 
ordeal, — a thoroughly lyric poem has always walked 
over the red hot ploughshares and is impatient when pins 
are stuck in it. 



250 BOSTON DAYS 



Perhaps you may have hesitated whether or not to 
write to me about the poem. I do not know — I only 
know that it costs an effort to write and don't doubt the 
sight of a pen is often odious to you. Well, now be glad 
you did it, for it made me a great deal happier, and I 
feel as much obliged to you and Mrs. Whipple for liking 
my poem and to you for saying so, as I ever did to any- 
body for the handsomest Christmas present I ever got in 
my life. 

Believe me. 

Yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

From this period (1857-94) the life of Dr. Holmes 
flowed as in a crescendo progress of growing literary 
fame and a social prominence wliich is best described 
as national recognition and love. Never was there a 
sweeter nature than his. How beautiful is this let- 
ter written to his friend and classmate, James Free- 
man Clarke, — a letter which is as a key to the minor 
life of Dr. Holmes. Under date of June, 1864, he 
writes : — 

" I have been feeling your texts (which, as you know, 
are the pulses of sermons), and from these I have stolen 
my way along until I got my hand on the hearts of a good 
number of them. 

"Now, the beauty of your sermons is that they have 
eggs in them, fragrant juices in them, strengthening 
cordials in them, sound brains in them, and therefore you 
and I are logically bound to approve, to admire, and to 
applaud them. I have always done my part in the way 
of approbation, admiration, and applause ; but as authors 
are apt sometimes to undervalue themselves, I want you 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 251 

to take my word for it that your discourses, read or heard, 
are the aurum potabile of spiritual medicine. Less fanci- 
fully, they are first perfectly human (which theology has 
not commonly been at all, still less divine) ; full of faith, 
full of courage, full of kindness and large charity ; 
tender, yet searching the realities of things with true 
manly thought ; poetical, yet with a great deal of plain 
common sense, — sermons that will always be good read- 
ing, because they reach down even below Christianity to 
that plutonic core of nature over which all revelations 
must stratify their doctrines. 

"Thank you for being good, for being brave, true, 
tender, brotherly to all mankind, sinners included, for 
thinking such good thoughts, for preaching them, for 
printing them, and once more for sending them to your 
loving friend and classmate." 

Calling on Mrs. Agassiz after the death of her 
husband, Dr. Holmes thus writes to Motley : — 

" Yesterday I went to Cambridge and called on Mrs. 
Agassiz, — the first time I have seen her since her hus- 
band's death. fShe was at work on his correspondence, 
and talked in a ver}^ quiet, interesting way about her 
married life. What a singular piece of good fortune it 
was that Agassiz, coming to a strange land, should have 
happened to find a woman so wonderfully fitted to be his 
wife that it seems as if he could not have bettered his 
choice if all womankind had passed before him, as the 
creatures filed in procession by the father of the race." 

It is a question if any man in public life exerted a 
wider influence or left on his age a finer and deeper 
impress than has Dr. Holmes. 



252 BOSTON DAYS 



At one time Lowell wrote to him one of those curious 
letters of reproach, veined with bitterness, by which the 
poet and diplomat occasionally surprised and disap- 
pointed his nearest friends. In his reply Dr. Holmes 
says : — 

" I supposed that you, and such as you, would feel that 
I had taught a lesson of love, and would thank uie for it, 
I supposed that you would say I had tried in my humble 
way to adorn some of the scenes of tliis common life that 
surrounds us, with colors borrowed from the imagiuation 
and the feelings, and thank me for my effort. I supposed 
you would recoguize a glow of kindly feeling in every 
word of my poor lessons — even in its slight touches of 
satire, which were only aimed at the excesses of well- 
meaning people. I supposed you would thank me for 
laughing at the ridiculous phantom of the one poet that 
is to be, whose imaginary performances inferior persons 
are in the habit of appealing to, to prove thab you and 
such as you are mere scribblers. I am sorry that I have 
failed in giving you pleasure because I have omitted two 
subjects on which you would have loved to hear my 
testimony. 

" Above all, I shall always be pleased rather to show 
what is beautiful in the life around me than to be pitching 
into giant vices, against which the acrid pulpit and the 
corrosive newspaper will always anticipate the gentle 
poet. Each of us has his theory of life, of art, of his 
own existence and relations. It is too much to ask of 
you to enter fully into mine, but be very well assured 
that it exists, — that it has its axioms, its intuitions, its 
connected beliefs, as well as your own. Let me try to 
improve and please my fellow-men after my own fashion 
at present; when I come to your way of thinking (this 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 253 

may happen), I liope I shall be found worthy of a less 
qualified approbation than you have felt constrained to 
give me at this time." 

After this it seems to me no words could be added 
of the gentle dignity, the noble outlook — no less noble 
because so sympathetic and sunny — of Dr. Holmes. 
In his own city most truly could it be said of him : 

" None knew him but to love him ; 
None named him but to praise." 

Dr. Holmes found his "summers of Hesperides " on 
the North Shore, that haunt of the painter and the poet ; 
the region that still echoes with his own songs and 
those of Whittier and Longfellow, Celia Thaxter, and 
Lucy Larcom. The " Autocrat," however, was less 
touched by nature than by life, and scenery to him was 
largely but a setting for circumstance. He was in- 
tensely in love with the spiritual drama of life, and in 
the " Cora^die Humaine " he discerned significances 
unremarked by insight less keen and by sympathy less 
delicate and responsive. Never was a man more be- 
loved and yet less truly understood save by his most 
intimate circle than Dr. Holmes. His nature was 
like quicksilver, — forever dancing, sparkling, shifting, 
and yet with depths so profound as to be forever 
unsounded. His gayety and sparkle were the outer 
garb of the deepest thought constantly engaged with 
the problems of destiny. He was always ready for 
the mere touch and go of life, but that was his armor, 
so to speak, and beneath it was another world, another 



254 BOSTON DAYS 

life, a divinely touched nature in whose depths phil- 
osophy and science and the most far-reaching grasp of 
the ethical laws had their abiding-place. 

Dr. Holmes lived so absolutely in an intellectual 
world, a spiritual world, in that larger sense of thought 
and divination, as well as religious feeling, that he little 
needed and little heeded the change of outer scenes 
afforded by travel. To leave '' the water side of Beacon 
Street " in the early summer for his country house at 
Beverly farm, on the North Shore, and to leave Beverly 
in the autumn for " the water side of Beacon Street," 
quite satisfied him for change and variety. 

There are exceptions to the tradition that whom the 
gods love die young. The fame of Dr. Holmes is the 
more permanent and abiding in that he lived to so 
great an age, and some of his best work was done after 
his seventy- fifth year. Without ever having been iden- 
tified with any special phase of reform or philanthropy, 
his nobility of nature was impressive. Life itself 
is the most important of problems to solve, the finest 
of all the fine arts to achieve, and the symmetry of 
character that enables a man to meet well the claims 
of private life is often greater than that of him who 
wins fame in public achievement. 

Dr. Holmes was never known as an abolitionist, or a 
suffi-agist, or a prohibitionist, or as this or that outside 
of the natural life and work of a man keenly alive to 
a great range of interests ; but there is not a question 
that affects social progress that he did not regard with 
interest and discuss with the most brilliant and discrim- 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 255 

inating keenness. There are persons whose entire force 
seems to express itself on a few specific things, or even 
on one, and they usually disappoint those who have 
known them through this one achievement when they 
come to be seen in the wholeness of life. Again, there 
are those whose power expresses itself in many ways, 
no one of which is perhaps dazzling, but on meeting 
them the stranger will feel how much greater is the 
character than any one or any number of its specific 
achievements would indicate. Dr. Holmes was one of 
these, save that any one of his various phases as poet, 
essayist, or romancer is brilliant enough to have quite 
excused his being no more than the author in that spe- 
cific literary line alone. 

Comparing Dr. Holmes and Mr. Lowell, there is a 
point which may not be without interest. Mr. Lowell 
united in himself two distinctive personalities, — the 
man of letters and the man of the world, while in Dr. 
Holmes the man and the author are one. In much of 
his literary work Mr. Lowell reveals himself as the saint 
and the hero ; but in personal companionship he was the 
cultivated and agreeable gentleman, courteous, scholarly, 
and fine, yet always a man of the world. But the 
personality of Dr. Holmes is fairly identical with his 
expressions of it as the author. His conversation, 
while in no sense bookish, was strangely like his books. 
It had the same indescribably brilliant quality. All 
aglow with the color of the moment, it had still that 
rhythmic and chiselled beauty that conveys a sense of 
form as well as of significance. 



256 BOSTON DAYS 



It was not only thought, profound, fine, far-reaching 
as may be, but thought so finely related and subtly 
suggestive of the vast range of vital experiences, ex- 
pressed in diction so choice as to lie within the region of 
art. Much of his conversation might be heard as if he 
were fairly reading from his own books, if one only 
listened with closed eyes. It is probably safe to believe 
that America has never produced a conversationalist so 
brilliant as Dr. Holmes. With Mr. Lowell conversation 
was one thing and writing another, although it goes 
without saying that his conversation was exceptionally 
interesting and fine. To the heart of the poet, the 
temperament and tastes of the scholar, the polished 
grace of the gentleman, he united ethical ideals in a 
way that became part of his individuality, and prede- 
termined the cast and conduct of his life. As a critic 
and scholar he holds rank commensurate with his fame 
as a poet. It would be hard to find a more perfect 
piece of literary criticism than his paper on Dante, and 
in his hands, indeed, the literary essay becomes a very 
vital and suggestive thing, although it may be held that 
Lowell had not the brilliancy of Macaulay, the depth 
of Carlyle, the electric wit of Whipple, the logical 
power of John Morley, the subtle insight of Ste. Beuve, 
or the artistic grace of Matthew Arnold. Nor had he 
the spiritual divination of Emerson, the imaginative art 
of Hawthorne, or the tenderly sympathetic genius of 
Longfellow. Still we have hardly any other American 
in whom so great a degree of talent has manifested 
itself in so many directions as in Mr. Lowell, — as poet, 



THE GOLDEX AGE OF GENIUS 257 

scholar, statesman, lecturer, and diplomat. In him the 
American of the nineteenth century was typically 
represented. His character revealed a kind of inflores- 
cence of the Puritan virtues, — their ruggedness, cul- 
tivated and polished, appearing as strength ; their 
uncompromising truth taking on in him the guise of 
noble sincerity and fearless devotion ; their aspiration 
appearing in him as spiritual truth. 

A panorama of enchanting scenes arises when the 
magician's power lifts for a moment the veil that hides 
the golden age of Boston, — the age of Emerson, Haw- 
thorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Freeman Clarke, 
Whipple, Fields, and Lowell. They are the immortals 
whose lives are the most precious heritage of their 
State. Mr. Lowell ^^^ll be remembered as the poet 
and man of letters who became a citizen of the world. 
Wherever literature Ls loved, wherever patriotism is 
held as a pious \-irtue, wherever human progress is seen 
as an indiWdual and national ideal, the name of James 
Russell Lowell will be enshrined. 

Far other words are needed to characterize Dr. 
Holmes in his electric personality, recognizing with the 
lightning swiftness of intuition the keynote to any scale 
of elective afl&nities. He was not so much magnetic as 
magnetism impersonated. He was so much more alive 
than other people. There was little of him to die. 
For the most part he was an immortal spirit now and 
here. 

One very marked attribute of Dr. Holmes in his later 
years was his searching and intelligent interest in the 

17 



258 BOSTON DAYS 



occult and psychical phenomena. Of course his readers 
know that he struck the keynote of this quest in early 
life in his romance of " Elsie Venner," and in the very 
remarkable psychological analysis presented in "The 
Guardian Angel." No one can read that novel without 
gaining at once an altogether clearer comprehension of 
human life. Dr. Holmes often talked of " brain waves," 
as he called thought transference. At a club dinner in 
London he said to the Bishop of Gloucester and to Mr. 
Haweis: "I think we are all unconsciously conscious 
of each other's brain waves at times ; the fact is, words, 
and even signs, are a very poor sort of language com- 
pared with the direct telegraphy between souls. The 
mistake we make is to suppose that the soul is circum- 
scribed and imprisoned by the body. Now the truth 
is, I believe I extend a good way outside my body ; 
well, I should say at least three or four feet all round, 
and so do you, and it is our extensions that meet. 
Before words pass, or we shake hands, our souls have 
exchanged impressions, and they never lie." 

Dr. Holmes was once asked what suggested to him 
the remarkable psychological problem wrought out in his 
metaphysical romance of " Elsie Venner." He replied 
that there was no external suggestion at all, —that the 
romance was merely the result of his own contemplation 
of the doctrine of original sin. That in this story he 
showed how a life, before becoming an organized being, 
could be poisoned at its source. He instanced the 
responsibility of the person who, for example, had given 
intoxicating drink to a boy, who, unknowing, had 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 259 

taken it and proceeded to work mischief and destruc- 
tion. The person giving the debasing drink, not the 
boy who drank it, woukl be responsible for the evil 
wrought. 

It is the most hopeless of tasks — notwithstanding 
the most fascinating as well — to attempt any tran- 
scription of a conversation with Dr. Holmes. The 
readers of his inimitable prose, whether in romance or 
essay, realize the ramifications of thought, or specula- 
tion, or incident which almost any topic or event 
suggests to him. This quality was pre-eminently felt 
in his conversation ; and as conversation may be more 
flexible than writing, his kaleidoscopic flashes of insight 
and thought illumined and enlarged every conceivable 
subject. Dr. Holmes has somewhere asserted that he 
" talked to find out what he thought," and this experi- 
mental examination of every subject, with whatever 
light fact, or incident, or science, or philosophy may 
throw on it, invested his conversation with enthralling 
charm. His genius was so versatile as to make his 
personality seem inclusive of a dozen men in one, and 
each most deeply and absorbingly interesting. At 
eighty-two the poet was all aglow with interest in the 
movements of the day. He was as alive as he was in 
early life as to 

" What wonders time has yet to show, 

What unborn years shall bring ; 
What ship the Arctic pole shall reach, 
What lessons science waits to teach, 
What sermons there are left to preach, 

What poems yet to sing." 



260 BOSTON DAYS 



To Dr. Holmes, as to all the others of the brilliant 
galaxy, Mr. Whipple was the friend whose sympathetic 
insight into his springs of thought was singularly 
potent in revealing each to himself. 

Among the voluminous mass of Mr. Whipple's 
correspondence that Mrs, Whipple, guarding from 
publication heretofore, has kindly permitted to be 
drawn upon for these pages, is the following letter : 

AsHPiELD, Mass., Sept. 19, 1869. 
My dear Whipple, — Your generous note makes my 
cheeks red and my heart warm. It covers me with con- 
fusion, too, that a letter to you that had been in my head 
and heart after reading your Bacon articles was never writ- 
ten because of many things. Happily your Elizabethan 
book has just come to me, and I shall have my swift and 
capital revenge of pleasure. 

As for the especial matter of your note, I am sure I am 
much better, but want some rest and am staving off press- 
ing invitations with both hands. 

Gratefully yours, 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

The beautiful companionship between Dr. Holmes, 
Lowell, and Longfellow in all those years finds expres- 
sion and description in numerous poems of each of the 
friends. The life in Elmwood was another of those 
high poetic lives conjoined in close sympathy with that 
led in Craigie House. 

" No qualities are really valuable save those which 
are transferable to another life," says some one, and the 
observation suggests itself iu connection with James 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 26l 

Russell Lowell, for few characters have been more 
wholly made up of these transferable qualities than his. 

His father, Rev. Dr. Charles Lowell, is held in 
reverent memory for his great goodness, and only 
within a few years tlie venerable Dr. Peabody related 
in some reminiscences how Dr. Lowell might often 
have been seen at night going with a lantern in his hand 
into the crowded and muddy lanes and alleys of the 
poorer parts of his parish, seeking out those in need. 
He was the pastor of the old West Church, and the 
venerable Dr. Bartol was his junior colleague. James 
Russell Lowell believed that he inherited his poetic 
taste from his mother, who was from the Orkney Isles, 
with all their wild and picturesque life. Elmwood, 
the house where he was born and reared, has been 
too often described to need further picturing. Until 
he went abroad as INIinister to the Court of St. James 
it was his home, and during the years of his absence 
was occupied by IMrs. Ole Bull. Again he returned to 
it, and there he died. 

At first Lowell was destined for a lawyer. He must 
have suddenly changed his mind, for on Oct. 18, 1838 
(when he was nineteen years of age), he wrote : " I am 
reading Blackstone with what grace I may," and in the 
same month and year he writes : — 

''I have renounced the law. I am going to settle down 
into a business man at last, after all I have said to the 
contrary. ... I am now looking for a place in a store. 
You may imagine that all this has not come to pass with- 
out a great struggle. I must expect to give up almost 



262 BOSTON DAYS 



entirely all literary pursuits, and iustead of making 
rhymes devote myself to making money." . . . 

A few days later, however, he records that on going 
into town to " look for a place " he stepped into court, 
where Webster was one of the counsel retained in a 
case, and he says : — 

" I had not been there an hour before I decided to con- 
tinue in my profession and study as well as I could." 

In this swift reversal of intention the imaginative 
temperament is plainly seen. For it is very difficult 
for one whose imagination vividly pictures this thing or 
that to decide, and abide by any decision ; things that 
the matter-of-fact temperament would never debate with 
itself, the artistic temperament sees in a panorama as 
successive pictures, and now one, and now another, 
captivates the judgment. Mr. Lowell was a man of 
exquisite tastes and culture, of a high order of talent 
and of true nobility, but he was never quite the hero. 
He never fully escaped from a certain bondage of 
conservatism. He sympathized with spiritual things 
through and by virtue of his poetic temperament, while 
with Emerson the reverse was true, and he sympathized 
with the poetic through the spiritual. 

The purely literary temperament is by no means neces- 
sarily the highest type in love and in spiritual receptivity. 
It may be, but it depends. Lowell, — at first hostile 
to the antislavery cause, — yet wrote its initial song — 
one that will stir and thrill through the ages — in "The 
Present Crisis." 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 263 

Of his sojourn in Concord when suspended from Har- 
vard for failure in a class of studies he disliked and for 
which he would substitute his own line, Professor Nor- 
ton says : — 

" He was not yet prepared to know Emerson, who might 
have helped him; but he had been bred in an atmosphere 
of conservatism in matters of the intellect and the spirit, 
and he shared in the then common aversion to Emerson's 
teaching." 

On meeting Thoreau Lowell wrote : — 

" It is exquisitely amusing to see how Thoreau imitates 
Emerson's tone and manner. With my eyes shut I 
shouldn't know them apart," 

Lowell had little sympathy for transcendentalism as 
it was in Emerson and Alcott and Margaret Fuller, and 
still his poems are filled with intimations of the spiritual 
life. As in this : — 

" We see but half the causes of our deeds, 
Seeking theiu wholly in the outer life. 
And heedless of the encircling spirit world, 
Which, though unseen is felt, and sows in us 
All germs of pure and world-wide purposes." 

The two interests that dominated his life reveal them- 
selves in his letters at nineteen and twenty, — the lean- 
ing toward poetry and politics. 

After deciding within twelve days that he would 
abandon law and again that he would pursue it, we 
find the next mouth that he writes : " I have quitted 
the law forever." A few months later he records that 



264 BOSTON DAYS 



the thought of business made him unhappy, and he 
again turns to the law. 

He lectured at Concord, for which they gave him four 
dollars. " I wish they 'd ask me at Cambridge, where 
they pay fifteen, or at Lowell, where they pay twenty- 
five," he writes. A literary plan that occurred to him in 
September of '39 was to write a series of communica- 
tions for some magazine in the form of Echermaun and 
Boswell, — " imaginary conversations with an imaginary 
great man, in which I can put down everything of worth 
that occurs to me during the day." In tlie next De- 
cember he met Maria White, the beautiful and gifted girl 
who became his wife. Of her Professor Norton writes : 

" Miss White was a woman of unusual loveliness and 
of gifts of mind and heart more unusual, wliich enabled 
her to enter with complete sympathy into her lover's 
intellectual life and to direct his genius to its higher 
aims." They were married in December of 1866, and 
in the few years immediately following he achieved a 
prominent recognition of his powers as a poet. In a 
letter he says : — 

" I know that God has given me powers such as are 
not given to all, and I will not hide my talent in mean 
clay. I do not care what others will think of me or of 
my book, because if I am worth anything I shall one day 
show it. I do not fear criticism so much as I love truth. 
. . . Maria fills my ideal and I satisfy hers, and I mean 
to live as one beloved by such a woman should live." 

Mr. Lowell had the temperament subject to inspira- 
tion. He was at times peculiarly receptive to subtle 



THE GULDEN AGE OF GENIUS 265 

and unseen influences. He was often, he said, "dimly 
aware " of the presence of spirits. 

Professor Norton's editing of the " Letters" is a work 
inviting the highest recognition. It is done with such 
wise selection and such delicacy that it is grateful to 
read them, and they offer, in themselves, almost as com- 
plete a biography of Lowell in the sense of interpreting 
his inner self, as is given by ]Mr. Scudder in the author- 
ized work which elaborates the story adding external 
scene and setting to the revelation of the poet's inner 
life as seen in the " Letters " collected and edited by 
Charles Eliot Norton. 

In Dr. Edward Everett Hale's fascinating book, 
called " Lowell and His Friends," the reader finds a per- 
fect panorama of old Boston. The early Harvard days 
when Josiah Quincy was the President, and on through 
the administrations of Sharpe and Felton, when Peirce, 
Channing, and Longfellow were in the college, hold 
charming memories. 

"There was not an ism but had its shrine," says Dr. 
Hale of the Boston of the forties, " nor a cause but had 
its prophet. . . . Lowell could discuss with a partner 
in a dance the moral significance of the ' Fifth Sym- 
phony ' of Beethoven in comparison with the lessons 
of the ' Second ' or the * Seventh.' Another partner in 
the next quadrille would reconcile for him the conflict 
of free will and foreknowledge. In Miss Peabody's 
foreign bookstore he could talk art for a week, procure 
Strauss' ' Leben Jesu,' or any evening hear Hawthorne tell 
the story of Parson Moody's veil, or discuss the origin 



266 BOSTON DAYS 



of the myth of Ceres with Margaret Fuller. . . . Mr. 
Emerson lectured for him ; Allston's pictures were hung 
in galleries for him ; Fanny Elssler danced for him, and 
Brahman sang for him." 

Lowell's early coterie of friends included Dr. Palfrey 
(who was the editor of the " North American Review " 
at that time), Sumner Hillard (who was Sumner's law 
partner), Fclton (then Greek professor at Harvard and 
later the President of the University), Fields, Whipple, 
and Emerson. In 1845 Thomas Starr King came to 
Boston, and he was at once welcomed into this brilliant 
circle. 

The eminently conservative character of Lowell's 
mind is indicated by a remark he made in a letter to 
Mrs. Howe more than thirty years ago. It was during 
his editorship of the " Atlantic," and she had sent him a 
poem which he declined with the assertion that no 
woman could write a poem, and that Mrs. Browning's 
efforts were a conspicuous illustration of her failure to 
be a poet. Mr. Lowell added in this note to Mrs. 
Howe that he would gladly accept a prose article from 
her. There is no question but that Mr. Lowell was 
always under the old order of things, believing that 
the woman was subservient to the man. His first 
wife, Maria White, was an exceedingly lovely woman 
of the old rt^gime, full of love and loyalty to her hus- 
band, and regarding him as the superior being. She 
was content to merge her individuality in his, it may 
be ; yet the result was harmony and happiness, and 
nothing, certainly, can be better than that. Nothing, 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 267 

indeed, can be so supremely good ; and that harmony is 
the final result, as it is the final ideal, of the greater 
independence and individuality of woman at the present 
time is true. Not antagonism, but unity; that unity 
which is the harmonious blending of two distinct chords, 
far richer than that which should consist of one chord 
and an echo. 

Mr. Lowell had the ethical radicalism of the moral 
enthusiast, and the social conservatism of his age and 
generation. This is revealed all through the letters 
that make up the two large and interesting volumes 
edited by Professor N'orton. Most interesting read- 
ing these letters are, and they offer great material 
for character-study. The incidental glimpses they 
give of notable people and the life of the day are 
delightful. 

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the great philanthropist, 
and his brilliant and gifted wife lived in fSouth Boston 
in these early years. Their home was a ]\Iecca of high 
and poetic pilgrimage, and such guests as frequented it 
were indeed the ornaments of a household. Mrs. Howe 
has always claimed for herself only the modest title of 
a student, but how rich are the results of that lifelong 
devotion to intellectual and spiritual ideals those 
best know who have been privileged to ap[)roach 
most nearly to all this wide and beautiful culture. 
Mrs. Howe's essential biography might almost be 
found in this clo.siug stanza of her poem entitled 
" PhUosophy : " — 



268 BOSTON DAYS 



" I know not if I've caught the matchless mood 
In which impassioned Petrarch sung of thee ; 
But this I know — the world its plenitude 
May keep, so I may share thy beggary." 

Tlie keynote of the life of Mrs. Howe may be dis- 
cerned in this stanza which suggests her poetic insight 
and breadth of culture. In her literary work Mrs. Howe 
stands pre-eminent for philosophic thought. As the 
author of the immortal " Battle Hymn of the Republic," 
her place in lyric art will be recognized while art shall 
live. In the great field of philanthropy and social and 
political reforms she has for half a century faced the 
world's passion and inertia ; she has seen glory in the 
depths of death. She has been one of the nobler few 
whose voices proclaim in the wilderness the triumphal 
progress of truth. Her messages to the world have 
always embodied the fruition of high purpose, the 
finest insight of thought and of generous and liberal 
culture. 

Born in New York (May 27, 1819) Mrs. Howe came 
in her early youth to Boston, with which city her life 
has been identified. Here she met with Emerson, Sum- 
ner, Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, Horace 
Mann, and others who were destined to be the friends 
and co-workers of her future life. There is a striking 
thought in one of George Eliot's novels where she 
speaks of the indifference with which we may view our 
unintroduced neighbor, while Destiny stands by, sar- 
castic, with the dramatis personoi folded in her hands. 
Something of this thought suggests itself as one sees, as 




Julia Ward Ilu/ie 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 269 

in a vision, this beautiful young woman, in all her cliarm 
and loveliness, just brought to the threshold of what 
was to be her future life. Julia Ward had an unusual 
fascination of manner, we are told, and a great enlarge- 
ment of life— in the line of the natural evolution 
of noble powers — awaited her. Among the new 
friends presented to her was one — a man of picturesque 
and magnetic manner — of a presence calculated to com- 
pel those around him to a more serious and thoughtful 
plane, a hero who held the accorded place of a leader 
in this galaxy of thinkers. This was Dr. Samuel Grid- 
ley Howe. " Accustomed to a society of learned men 
whose whole energy was given to thought and specula- 
tion, what wonder that the character of the chivalrous 
man, who thought and worked out his thought with an 
enthusiasm and steady persistence which compelled 
success, should attract the sensitive, romantic young girl 
who had lived hitherto in an atmosphere of speculative 
thought," wrote INIaud Howe (now Mrs. John Elliott) of 
her father, and perhaps no words could more graphically 
depict the attraction between this hero of the hour and 
the lovely young woman. In 1 843 Miss Ward and Dr. 
Howe were married, and immediately sailed for Europe, 
remaining abroad two years. It was a charming social 
epoch in England at this time, as is so graphically re- 
vealed in the letters of Motley, who depicts London 
society in some of its most brilliant phases ; and Dr. 
and ]\Irs. Howe were cordially received by a host of 
famous people. Among these were Dickens, Monckton 
Milnes, afterward Lord Houghton, Carlyle, Sydney 



270 BOSTON DAYS 



Smith, the Duchess of Sutherland, Thomas Moore, 
Samuel Rogers, and Lord Morpeth. Sydney Smith, 
alluding to Dr. Howe's work for Laura Bridgman, 
spoke of him as " the modern Pygmalion who had put 
life into a statue." A long and delightful tour followed 
through the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and 
Germany, and at last they approached the Eternal 
City. This touched the poetic heart of Mrs. Howe 
most deeply, and in a poem called " Rome," in her first 
volume, " Passion Flowers," these lines occur at the 

close : — 

" Oh, my Rome, 
As I have loved thee, rest God's love with thee ! " 

And again, in " The City of My Love " : — 

" She sits among the eternal hills 

Their crown thrice glorious and dear ; 
Her voice as a thousand tongues 
Of silver fountains, gurgling clear. 



" And, though it seem a childish prayer, 
I 've breathed it oft that when I die 
As thy remembrance dear in it, 

That heart in thee might buried lie." 

It was in Rome that Mrs. Howe first knew the rap- 
ture of the mother's bliss, for there was born her first 
child, Julia Romana, later Mrs. Anagnos, over whose 
silent rest in Mt. Auburn the roses of many summers 
have now bloomed and faded. 

Returning to Boston, Dr. and Mrs. Howe made their 
home in the Institution for the Blind, of which he was 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 271 

the director. Happy and beautiful years, rich with the 
mental wealth of Boston's golden age, followed. Mrs. 
Howe's first distinct essay in literature was the volume 
of poems called " Passion Flowers," published in 1853. 
One poem in this volume entitled " The Royal 
Guest" is at once so significant in thought and so 
little known to latter-day readers that it will be given 
here in its completeness. 

" They tell me, T am shrewd with other men, 
With thee I 'm slow and difficult of speech ; 
With others, I may guide the car of talk, 
Thou wing'st it oft to realms beyond my reach. 

" If other guests should come, I 'd deck my hair, 
And choose my newest garment from the shelf ; 
When thou art bidden, I would clothe my heart 
With holiest purpose, as for God himself. 

" For them, I wile the hours with tale or song, 
Or web of fancy, fringed with careless rhyme ; 
But how to find a fitting lay for thee, 
Who hast the harmonies of every time '? 

' ' Oh friend beloved ! I sit apart and dumb, 
Sometimes in sorrow, oft in joy divine ; 
My lip will falter, but my prison'd heart 
Springs forth, to measure its faint pulse with thine. 

" Thou art to me most like a royal guest. 
Whose travels bring him to some lowly roof. 
Where simple rustics spread their festal fare. 
And blushing, own it is not good enough. 

*' Bethink thee, then, whene'er thou com'st to mo 
From high emprise and noble toil to rest. 
My thoughts are weak and trivial, matched with thine, 
But the poor mansion offers thee its best." 



272 BOSTON DAYS 



From the world of scholarship and the world of spir- 
itual insight has Mrs. Howe always drawn her strength 
and her inspiration. During her entire life she has kept 
the habits of the student, nor is the ecstasy of the mys- 
tic unknown to her. In her poem entitled "Visions" 
this stanza occurs : — 

" Then Life rises to entomb me, 
Waking, I am all alone ; 
Half I feel Christ passes from me. 
Half I feel He is not gone." 

These lines flash a searchlight on her intellectual pro- 
cesses. She has been a deep student of Swedenborg, 
Kant, Spinoza, Fichte, and Hegel. She has made her 
own the entire realm of literature. As an author, she 
truly deserves the name of poet ; as a prose writer, she 
is supreme on the philosophic side of life ; as a leader 
in social progress, she has given to contemporary life 
new ideals and noble standards. Of the near and 
tender relations of the fireside and the more intimate 
circle of familiar friends, one of her daughters has well 
written : — 

' ' To those who have lived nearest to the deep heart, 
its warmth has overcome the griefs and disappointments 
of the world. To those who from a distance can only 
judge of the woman by her work, the glow of her genius 
is a beneficent and helpful light. As poet, philosopher, 
reformer, she is known to the world ; to her own she is 
dearest as woman, friend, and mother." 

In writing to Charlotte Cushman Mrs. Howe once 
said, "The grandeur of the human life is such that 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 273 

advantageous circumstances do not really heighten it, 
though to our short-sighted gaze they seem to do so," 
and these words may stand written of her own life. 
The scenery of her achievements in this world has 
always been that of refined elegance and beauty, yet 
these can neither add to nor detract from the signifi- 
cance of the personal impress she leaves on two cen- 
turies. Her vocation is distinctively that of poet and 
prophet. In all the range of poetic literature it is 
difficult to find any single poet who appeals so directly 
to the spiritual energy alone and supreme as Mrs. 
Howe. Like the handwriting on the wall, we find 
such thought as in these lines : — 

" Power, reft of aspiration ; 
Passion, lacking inspiration ; 
Leisure, void of contemplation. 

"Thus shall danger overcome thee, 
Fretted luxury consume thee, 
All divineness vanish from thee." 

Any study of Mrs. Howe's life seems to reveal that 
she has certainly fulfilled — whether or not she has 
clearly recognized the special gift and grace laid upon 
her — a very distinctive vocation and one in which 
among all other great women she yet stands alone, that 
of speaking the highest counsel to the soul in the most 
concentrated and intensely vital expression. Like Dr. 
Holmes, Mrs. Howe has been the " poet of occasions " 
at a vast number of these festivities which have always 
numerously enlivened the Boston days. The group of 

18 



274 BOSTON DAYS 



immortals that made the golden age of Boston were 
never found wanting in mutual appreciation. The 
verses of occasion always and of necessity borrow some- 
thing from the immediate atmosphere and when divested 
of this lose somewhat of their aroma, yet they may 
invite the test of time. She has also, like all persons 
who live in more or less daily companionship with the 
muses, written much verse of the mere facile felicity of 
the moment, which has little claim to literary immor- 
tality. All this, of course, in any poet's life is taken for 
granted. There is a portion of Tennyson which, had it 
not the association of his name and his finer expres- 
sions, would be held as of little claim to consideration. 
But we do not judge people, even poets, by their defects 
and negations. The high-water mark, if touched only 
once in a lifetime, is the only abiding standard from 
which to predicate a judgment. All below that is 
merely of the temporary and objective world, and holds 
no permanent significance. 

It was early in her life that Mrs. Howe became 
convinced of the importance of the political enfran- 
chisement of women. For years before, Mrs. Lucy 
Stone — gentle, dignified, logical, and at once winning 
and commanding in her silvery-voiced eloquence — 
had led this hope, which once seemed so forlorn, and 
has now acquired a political and national importance. 
To Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Livermore, and Colonel 
Higginson the early phases of this reform owed much 
of its basis of social dignity. To them, as persons of 
noble intellect, of scliolarly culture, of social elevation, 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 275 

and loveliness of character, it must owe its first social 
prestige and its claim to higher recognition. 

One of the most important features in the life of 
Mrs. Howe has been that of her public addresses. 
Nothing could have seemed more remote from the 
probable future of the brilliant girl of society than that 
she should preside over conventions assembled in the 
name of social reforms. Yet as her spirit expanded 
in deepening lines of thought ; as she came into 
that inheritance of what Professor Harris well terms 
"the larger self," that infinite life which the finite 
life even here may begin to live, as her sympathies 
broadened and she came more and more into her 
kingdom of the intellectual world, she entered upon 
a new phase of the work for which she was heaven- 
commissioned. 

As ]\Iary A. Livermore stands distinctively for spirit- 
uality of life ; as Lucy Stone stood distinctively for the 
political enfranchisement of women ; as Frances Willard 
stood for temperance, so Mrs. Howe stands distinctively 
for culture. No other woman of corresponding culture 
in our own country has so intimately related herself to 
public life. 

In poetic phrase she gives utterance to such keen 
insights as this : 

" If the vain and the silly bind thee, 

I cannot unlock thy chain ; 
If sin and the senses blind thee, 

Thyself must endure the pain ; 
If the arrows of conscience find thee, 

Thou must conquer thy peace again." 



276 BOSTON DAYS 



Mrs. Howe's poems are valuable as a moral breviary, 
a spiritual tonic. They call one to a renewal of energy, 
to the realization of the significant question " What is 
the office of modern society ? " She questions and she 
defines its office as the learning how to well use its 
resources. 

"No gift can make rich those who are poor in 
wisdom," she says ; and again, " It is not good for 
beauty that it be a profession." And of wealth she 
asserts : " To me the worship of wealth means the 
crowning of low merit with undeserved honor ; the 
setting of successful villany above unsuccessful virtue. 
It means neglect and isolation for the few who follow 
a heart's high hope through want and pain, through 
evil report and through good report." 

Of the spiritual wealth of her life she herself simply 
says : " I have only drawn from history and philosopiiy 
some understanding of human life, some lessons in the 
value of thought for thought's sake, and, above all, a sense 
of the dignity of character above every other dignity." 

Of the famous Radical Club Mrs. Howe was always 
a leading spirit. In the history of society it is hardly 
probable that at any one club there were ever assembled 
so wonderful a galaxy of genius and high talent as at 
tliis gathering, organized by the Rev. John Sargent and 
Mrs. Sargent, at whose home the meetings took place. 
Among these were Emerson, Sumner, Dr. and Mrs. 
Howe, John Weiss, Theodore Parker, Dr. Hedge, 
Colonel Higginson, James Freeman Clarke, the Rev. 
Pliillips Brooks, John Fiskc, David Wasson, Mrs. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 277 

Cheney, the Rev. W. H. Channing, Mr. and Mrs. 
Edwin P. Whipple, Mrs. Moulton, Mr. Frothingham, 
Henry James, Miss Peabody, Professor Peirce, Professor 
Calvin E. Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, John G. Whittier, 
and many other notable people were, at one time or 
another, present at these remarkable gatherings. The 
great and gifted of this century have been the friends 
of Mrs. Howe. Such men as Emerson, Longfellow, 
Lowell, Holmes, Whipple, Sumner, Agassiz, Motley, 
Peirce, Victor Hugo, and Lieber have delighted in her 
society. 

The Radical Club was one of the intellectual land- 
marks of Boston between 18G7-80, and a centre that 
radiated new energy by its discussion of problems of 
thought. 

The club met on Monday mornings at the home of 
the Rev. and Mrs. John Sargent, and the subjects dis- 
cussed were the purely ethical and transcendental. 
The discussions were not impractical, for nothing is so 
practical as ideas ; but they were not, one may say, 
ideas at that time practically applied. The world has 
now progressed to this higher realization that the bent 
and aim of ideas is not intellectual brilliancy or achieve- 
ment, per se, but the betterment of humanity. Instead 
of discussing the gods on Olympus, we discuss the 
problems that invade modern social and economic life. 
This is not the forsaking of intellectual and artistic 
ideals ; it is their fulfilment and application. 

" What a group these were ! " wrote a guest of the 
club : " Henry W. Longfellow, with his white head 



278 BOSTON DAYS 



and patriarchal beard ; Oliver Wendell Holmes, looking, 
as he always does, and as, I fancy, he will to the last 
of his days, a boy in the midst of his white-headed 
contemporaries ; George William Curtis, with his refined 
face, whereon the work and wear of his faithful, busy 
life are beginning to tell visibly in the lines here and 
there; Frothingham of New York, with his tranquil 
equipoise of manner, his cultivated face, and quiet 
Immor ; and Lydia Maria Child, with scores of others, — 
clergymen, literary men, and journalists." 

Theodore Parker read at one meeting a paper on 
" The Immanence of God," of which one of the members 
said : — 

" Then comes a voice from heaven. A man, one fifth 
flesh and four fifths flame, kindles under his inspiration 
into a miraculous light, and says words that can never be 
forgotten. I dare not try to repeat them. Who heard 
John Weiss can nevermore be quite as petty as his old 
poor self." 

Mrs. Howe has well characterized the work of the 
Radical Club as a " high congress of souls in which 
many noble thoughts were uttered." 

Boston without Edward Everett Hale would be more 
bereft than the play of "Hamlet" without the melan- 
choly Dane. 

According to Colonel Higginson's definition that to 
be truly cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in 
his own country, Edward Everett Hale is a cosmopoli- 
tan, and it is a suggestive fact that the author of " A 
Man Without a Country " is one who may almost be 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 279 

said to have all countries and all generations for his 
own, for tlie chief characteristic of this noted divine is 
his wide relatedness to life. His personal influence 
has been, without a doubt, the one most potent of any 
single or individual influence in his native city. As a 
clergyman, author, journalist, lecturer, reformer, and a 
man of society, he meets and mingles with many circles 
of life more or less foreign to each other. By just 
what occult law of dispensation everybody who wants 
anything feels inspired to seek Dr. Hale is not quite 
clear to the average mind ; but it is unmistakably clear 
that if he had not a liberal inheritance of what the 
Yankees call " faculty " he would have been a man 
without any (earthly) country long ago, whatever he 
might have possessed in a better world than this. 
Many of the young women of his parish take great de- 
light in assisting him in this drift of work that assails 
the pleasant household. 

The home of the Hales is in the charming suburb of 
Roxbury (Boston Highlands), — a commodious, cream- 
colored house, embowered in trees, and with a porch 
vine-wreathed with the woodbine. The rooms are all 
more or less filled with books and papers, and the 
hospitable rooms have an air as if they were a place 
where people enjoyed themselves. In the summer, if 
they do not go to Europe, the family betake themselves 
to the " red house," on the Connecticut shore, where 
they can live half the time out of doors. His door-bell 
rings from morning till night. He is sought for by 
everybody and for everything. He is not merely the 



280 BOSTON DAYS 



pastor Oi' his own parisli, he is apparently the pastor 
of every parish, and of people who have no parish 
at all. He is hailed as the special patron saint 
of every conceivable municipal enterprise, — political, 
economic, literary, artistic, philanthropic, or educational. 
Social life rises in high tide at his door, and, withal, he 
lives tlie life of the kingdom of heaven in that he is 
here not to be ministered unto, but to minister. 

The life of Dr. Hale has stood for the greater part 
of this century as one of the witnesses for the power of 
good over evil ; for intellectual enlargement and spiritual 
illumination over ignorance and blindness. Edward 
Everett Hale is probably the most vital element of 
Boston : the citizen who unites the largest sympathies 
with the largest degree of executive power. His energy 
is stupendous. His power of extracting the utmost 
worth of a day is little less than marvellous. Not less 
marvellous is the power of galvanizing other people 
into a working mood and enabling them to get the 
best and the utmost out of the hour. He is a great 
organizer and a great inspirer of organizations. 

Dr. Hale can trace his descent back through almost 
three hundred years of notable ancestry, — the first 
American of this family having been Rev. John Hale, 
born in Charlestown, Mass., in 1636, and who died on 
May 9, 1700. He was a graduate of Harvard, as nearly 
all liis descendants have been. Nathan Hale, the 
eminent soldier, whose statue is in Central Park, New 
York, was a great-uncle of Edward Everett Hale, whose 
father bore the same name, — Nathan. He married 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 281 

Sarah Preston Everett, a sister of Edward Everett, and 
their children were : Nathan, born in 1818 ; Lucretia 
Peabody, born in 1820 ; Edward Everett (the present 
great divine), born April 3, 1822 ; Charles, born in 
1831, and Susan, in 1838. 

Dr. Hale married a niece of Henry Ward Beecher 
and of Mrs. Stowe, and his own family consists of 
three or four sons and one daughter, Ellen Day Hale, 
who has made no little reputation as an artist. Of 
the sons, Philip Hale is an artist and art teacher ; 
Robert Beverly, who showed great promise as a 
writer, died at the early age of twenty-four, in October 
of 1895. 

Dr. Hale's father, Nathan Hale the second, was born 
in Westhampton, Mass., in 1784, and died in Boston 
in February of 1865. He was a graduate of Williams 
College, and afterward studied law and was admitted 
to the Boston bar in 1810. In 1814 he purchased the 
" Boston Advertiser," the oldest daily newspaper of this 
city, and was for many years its owner and editor. In 
this office his son, Edward Everett, learned to set type, 
and he has often related how he had served in every 
capacity on the paper from that of reporter up to the 
editor-in-chief. Dr. Hale had the advantage, indeed, 
of growing up in touch with affairs and events of im- 
portance. His father was the president of the Boston 
and Worcester Railroad Company, the first transpor- 
tation in New England to make use of steam. His 
father was also a member of the Academy of Arts and 
Sciences, and served in the Lesrislature of his State. 



282 BOSTON DAYS 



Edward Everett Hale graduated from Harvard in 
1839 ; he studied divinity and was ordained as a minis- 
ter in 1842, and in 1844 was called to the Second 
Unitarian Church in Worcester, where he remained 
until 1856, when he accepted the call to the "South 
Congregational " Church in Boston, of which for over 
forty years he has remained the pastor. 

The best-known literary work of Dr. Hale is in the 
short stories entitled " The Man Without a Country " 
and "My Double, and How He Undid Me.^' The 
former has taken its rightful place among American 
classics, and the latter ranks as inimitable comedy. 
" Ten Times One Is Ten " is a story that has caused 
the founding of clubs and which has entered intimately 
into more lives as a stimulating, helpful influence than 
perhaps any other tale ever written. 

Dr. Hale accomplishes his enormous amount of work 
by himself adhering to a plan which involves method 
and concentration. He often speaks of the " two hours 
a day," or " the three hours a day " people ; that is, 
those who will hold the one or the other stated time 
wholly and entirely to their work. He regards this 
as the utmost that is desirable, even, not to say possible, 
for he considers that social and neighborly and helpful 
duties are just as important to the symmetry of perfect 
living as is any special work. In which he is right. 
It is the quality of life which is of supreme importance, 
rather than any one special achievement. 

If one seeks in Dr. Hale's system of ethics for the 
secret of his marvellous activity and comprehensiveness, 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 283 

he will find it to lie, perhaps, in Dr. Hale's mental 
attitude toward society. 

Of his religious life his simple words are : — 

" I always knew God loved me, and I was always grate- 
ful to Him for the world He placed me in. I always 
liked to tell Him so, and to receive His suggestions to 
me." 

It is hardly possible to understand how, in the 
tumultuously busy life of the Rev. Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale, he could ever have produced so large an amount 
of literary work. His life is manifold, each day. He 
has never had that sense of seclusion and leisure which 
has been held to be the author's best capital, and yet 
has done literary work enough for a man of letters 
alone. When Prof. Benjamin Peirce asserted that 
man is a machine for the conversion of material into 
spiritual power, he seemed to define Dr. Hale. He is 
a very spiritual dynamo. 

Dr. Hale has never been a transcendentalist, although 
he was sympathetic with its aspirations and its struggle 
for illumination. His sense of the humorous was always 
keen, and he has, too, a deep interest in the natural 
unfolding of life that demands no hothouse forcing. 
" You are not," he will say, " God's child on Sunday 
and the world's on Monday ; you are God's child all 
the time." The mysticism in the transcendental move- 
ment did not attract him. The problem he saw was 
this : '' How to gain the life, strength of will, character, 
and purposes, by which alone can the man make his 



284 BOSTON DAYS 



bodily strength and his mental discipline to be of any 
real value." His conception of living is that each day 
shall be consecrated to body, mind, and soul, and that 
the man — the real man — must control with absolute 
sway the mind and the body. " Sleep," he says, " is 
the first of the physical duties ; good sleep, and enough 
of it." He advises young people to take a certain time 
each day, two hours or three hours, for personal culture 

— mental and spiritual — but he regards two as better 
than three hours. " You are in a world knit in with 
other people," he says. " Accept that position once for 
all, and do not struggle against it." Instead of counsels 
to avoid social life, Dr. Hale holds social duties as 
among the first and the most important. 

Dr. Hale's eightieth birthday (April 3, 1902) was 
celebrated in Boston with a large gathering in Symphony 
Hall, when " troops of friends " indeed brought their 
tribute in music, eloquence, and friendly greeting. The 
occasion was a memorable one, and could not but 
recall a passage from Bulwer as applicable to Dr. Hale, 

— a passage that runs as follows : — 

"But the final greatness of a fortunate man is rarely 
made by any violent effort of his own. He has sown the 
seed in the time foregone, and the ripe time brings up 
the harvest. His fate seems taken out of his own control ; 
greatness seems thrust upon him. He has made himself, 
as it were, a want to the nation, a thing necessary to it ; 
he has identified himself with his age, and in the wreath 
or the crown on his brow the age itself seems to put 
forth its flowers." 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 285 

Dr. Hale has sown the seed of every noble and 
generous quality during his long and beautiful life, and 
its flowering is the natural result, — the inevitable har- 
vest of such sowing. In the divine sense he has per- 
petually lost his life ; he has forgotten all save the 
Master's service, and like Him who came not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, he has given his 
powers in the perfect surrender of service to humanity. 
Not the least of this service is in his sane and healthy 
mental attitude toward life. He invests it with the 
atmosphere of simplicity, courage, cheerfulness, and 
faith, — the essential elements of happy, harmonious 
living. 

As scholar, critic, translator, and editor, Prof. Charles 
Eliot Norton stands pre-eminent. His home on 
Shady Hill, Cambridge, near the college grounds, is 
one of peculiar charm in the treasures of art and litera- 
ture — especially of early Italian art, as represented in 
pictures from Tintoretto and Titian — by which he is 
surrounded. The most accomplished translator and 
interpreter of Dante, the friend of Ruskin, the editor of 
Lowell's letters, giving to the world such a portrait of 
his friend as will stand forever eminent in the literature 
of biography, — in this home does the great scholar and 
critic find an ideal environment. 

Professor Norton — whose retirement from Harvard 
in 1898 was an event deplored by the great University 
in which he had so long held the Chair of Fine Arts — 
is a marked figure in New England life. By tempera- 
ment, taste, and culture he is the exponent, facile prin- 



286 BOSTON DAYS 



ceps, of belles-lettres in America. He is a scholar, a 
critic, and, though not a poet, he is an appreciator of 
poets, and their interpreter. Perhaps that office is even 
more rare. Between Lowell and Professor Norton there 
existed the most ideal friendship. Mr. Lowell was 
nine years the senior, and that Professor Norton looked 
up to him even more than these few years of seniority 
would necessarily invite is revealed in the dedication of 
his new (1891) translation of the "Divina Commedia" 
to Mr. Lowell in these words : — 

" It is a happiness for me to connect this volume with 
the memory of my friend and master from youth. I was 
but a beginner in the study of the Divine Comedy when I 
first had his incomparable aid iu the understanding of it. " 

The friendship between them was very close and 
sympathetic, and it is not unfrequently related of Mr. 
Lowell that when asked if he would not like to meet 
So and So, he would reply in a kind of sensitive irrita- 
tion, " No ; I don't want to see anybody but Charles 
Norton." 

Prof. Charles Eliot Norton is the son of Andrews 
Norton, a well-known Unitarian theologian of New 
England. Andrews Norton was born in Hingham, 
Mass., in 1786, and died in Newport, R. L, in 1852. 
He graduated at Harvard in 1804, and later became a 
tutor at Bowdoin College. He was afterward the libra- 
rian for some time at Harvard ; a lecturer on Biblical 
criticism, and iji 1819 was appointed to the Dexter 
chair of sacred literature in the new Divinity School of 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 287 

Cambridge, which he held until 1830, when he went 
into what in the parlance of the day was called " literary 
retirement." Dr. Andrews Norton was then but forty- 
six years of age, but he considered himself approaching 
old age. He still led the Unitarian protest, however, 
against Calvin, although he opposed the liberal radical- 
ism of Theodore Parker with equal energy. In his last 
years he edited the Miscellaneous Writings of Charles 
Eliot, after whom his son, the famous Harvard professor 
of this day, was named. Charles Eliot Norton was 
born in November of 1827, and graduated at Harvard 
in the class of '46. He entered a Boston counting- 
room, and three years later went to India as supercargo 
of a ship, and made a leisurely tour and studies through 
the country. During this time Mr. Longfellow wrote 
to him, under date of February, 1850, saying : — 

" I have been thinking how very odd and outlandish 
anything written on the banks of Charles River must 
sound when read on the banks of the Ganges, and 
how small we must all appear to you who are personally 
acquainted with the boundless Krishna, the Valiant. . . . 
And now, dear Charles, Namarasham Namarasham ! and 
whatever may be the Hindoo for I love you ! Bring home 
the two great epics, — the Razanama and the Mahabharata. 
Also from Persia Zoroaster's Zend Avesta." 

Mr. Norton spent some three years abroad at this 
time and he has always renewed and revived his Euro- 
pean impressions and associations by frequent revisit- 
ings. From 1804 to 18C8 he was co-editor with Lowell 
of the " North American Review." 



288 BOSTON DAYS 



As will be well remembered it is Professor Norton 
who edited the Carlyle and Emerson eorrespondence, and 
also the early letters of Carlyle. This service he again 
performed for Lowell, editing his letters — the great 
mass of which were in his hands — with the most deli- 
cate fidelity to the sanctities of private life as distin- 
guished from its literary values. In 1891 appeared 
Professor Norton's translation — in prose — of Dante, 
in three volumes, devoted, respectively, to the " Hell," 
" Purgatory," and " Heaven." These were followed by 
" The New Life " (Vita Nuova). 

As a lecturer on Dante Professor Norton is in- 
comparable. There is perhaps hardly another man in our 
country who stands so distinctively and inclusively for 
culture — in its rarest and highest form — as does Pro- 
fessor Norton. Colonel Higginson declared him to be the 
most cultured man in America. This is not to say that his 
scholarship alone is not at least equalled by many other 
men ; but it is that other great scholars are as a rule 
applying their accomplishments and resources in other 
directions than abstract culture alone : as James Russell 
Lowell, who was an author and diplomat as well as a 
man of wide culture ; President Eliot, who is at the 
head of a great university ; and so one might run on ; 
but Professor Norton has devoted his life exclusively 
to the extension of the choicest quality of literary and 
artistic culture. 

In his chair of Fine Arts at Harvard Professor 
Norton has impressed upon successive classes of stu- 
dents an understanding and a reverence for the fine arts 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 289 

and for poetry and the higher literature. To attend his 
lectures was in itself considered by Harvard students as 
a liberal education. No professor in the university was 
more beloved and honored. His distinction of manner, 
his charm and graciousness, and his sincere and un- 
affected interest in the individual welfare and progress 
of the students won their entire confidence and com- 
manded their admiration. 

It is reassuring, in his lectures, to hear the Professor 
place poetry as the most important expression of life. 
The chief end of literature, he believes, is to acquire 
the love and the understanding of poetry. His 
reason for this statement, which may seem, at first, a 
little extreme, but will commend itself on reflection, — 
is this : That it is poetry that cultivates and develops 
the imagination, and that it is imagination which 
makes life worth the living. The hope and promise 
of mankind, he said, lie within its inspiration. Sweep- 
ing away the mass of minor poets, he notes the 
few great ones who are worthy extended study. Re- 
ferring to the charge that poetry is neglected and that 
the desires of the day are too much set on material 
things. Professor Norton has pointed out how that the 
exclusive pursuit of the material can result only in the 
narrowing of mental interests and resources, and thus 
character loses in breadth and dignity. 

The poet is determined from the fact that with him 
the imagination works more powerfully than with other 
men. He, alone, sees human nature clearly and inter- 
prets it to itself. 

19 



'290 BOSTON DAYS 



A little note from Professor Norton to Mr. Whipple 
thus runs : — 

Cambridge, April 27, 1880. 

Dear Mr. Whipple, — You will be pleased to know- 
that Wendell Holmes and Judge Lowell were chosen into 
the Club on Saturday. 

I am much obliged to you for remembering Mr. Eaton's 
fine sayings concerning what he learned from me ; but 
they give me a conviction that he must be morbidly im- 
pressed with the sense of having wasted his time in Ger- 
many ; or else be a disciple of Senator Matthews with a 
rooted scorn of " abroad." 

You will be glad to learn that the latest news from Mrs. 
Lowell is encouraging. She seems now in a fair way for 
recovery. 

I am very truly yours, 

Charles Eliot Norton. 

Professor Norton's comparative estimate of Homer, 
Shakspeare, and Dante is one of deep interest. He 
finds Homer depicting the human race in its early 
stages when its experiences were simple and few, while 
Shakspeare portrays complex natures, yet both Homer 
and Shakspeare, he noted, held the mirror up to nature 
without the interference of their own personalities. 
But Dante towered above botli, — Dante, who was not 
only a poet but a spiritual teacher. Professor Norton 
considers Dante as the one greatest poet of humanity in 
its moral aspects. 

Dr. Parsons, also an eminent Dantean scholar and 
translator, and one of the choice circle to be met at the 
Sunday evenings of Mrs. Whipple, was a man of rare 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 291 

and exquisite gifts and called by Hawthorne "' the most 
wwhuman man of letters in America." Whether he was 
quite human or not, it was a circle fit though few, 
who knew and most prized Dr. Parsons. The power of 
impressing one's own personality upon the world is a 
unique and specific gift of itself, or, rather, it is the 
result of a certain definite combination of qualities. It 
is not invariably ^.alent, or even genius, which is not 
unallicd to these high qualities. It is perhaps largely 
the result of sympathy and of subtle, intuitive recogni- 
tion of the needs and desires of others, with some aid 
from the dramatic gift. On a lower plane this power 
of impressing one's personality upon the world becomes 
the commercial faculty. 

At all events, it was this quality which Dr. Parsons 
lacked. He had the isolation of his temperament. He 
could not come into touch with general life. He was 
not facile. A poet of rarest gifts; a student whose 
rewards were rich and noble in the direction he pur- 
sued ; a man of fine and exquisite tastes, of delicate 
sensibilities, — was Dr. Parsons. As a literary man he 
ranked among the few of our greatest authors. He 
found his peers only with Lowell, Longfellow, and 
Hawthorne. As a scholar he ranked with Professor 
Charles Eliot Norton. His translation of Dante is 
one with genuine claim to perpetuate it in literature. 
His poems, comparatively few in number, hold the 
sacred fire. On his altar burned the living coal. To one 
familiar with the exquisite quality of his poetic art, it 
seems incredible that ho had so little of what men call 



292 BOSTON DAYS 



fame. He wrote poetry for tlie poets. Yet to a ma- 
jority of the intelligent readers of the day his name is 
almost unknown. His " Lines on a Bust of Dante " 
and " Paradisa Gloria " are poems to hold forever their 
place in literature. 

"There have been now and again," wrote Richard 
Hovey, the author of that haunting elegy/' Seaward," on 
Dr. Parsons, " there have been certain poets who seem 
to have been born out of due time. They have not been 
opposed to their age so much as apart from it. The 
Hamlets of verse, for them the time has been out of 
joint, and they have not had the intensity or the reso- 
lution to set it right. Thrown back upon themselves 
by an environment which was distasteful to them but 
which they lacked either the force or the inclination to 
overcome, they have necessarily had little to say. But 
on that very account they have frequently given more 
thought to the purely artistic side of their work than 
more copious writers. Such men were Collins and 
Gray, and afterwards Landor ; men whom we admire 
more for the classic beauty of their style and for other 
technical qualities than for the output of their imagina- 
tion or the penetration of their insight. Of this class 
of poets, witli no mean rank among them, was Thomas 
William Parsons." 

It cannot be claimed for Dr. Parsons that he was a 
great man in that sense of character which is calculated 
to leave on the age a permanent impress. Essentially 
was he a man born out of time and tune. His nature 
was an exotic planted by some fate in what was to him 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 293 



an uninviting environment. He was artistic, but not 
so divinely artistic as to be heroic. He had not the 
infinite tenderness for humanity that so signally charac- 
terized Longfellow, nor the broad and noble philoso- 
phy of Lowell. Neither had he the perfect trust and 
spiritual insight of Whittier ; yet none of these have 
written a " Paradisa Gloria." 

This single poem stands alone and unrivalled in 
lyrical perfection in all American literature, as does 
Tennyson's " Break, Break, Break," in English poetry. 
What stately, splendid beauty lies in its opening 
stanza ! — 

*' There is a city, builded by no hand 

And unapproachable by sea or shore. 
And unassailable by any band 

Of storming soldiery for evermore." 

The remaining stanzas are : — 

" There we no longer shall divide our time 
By acts or pleasures, — doing petty things 
Of work or warfare, merchandise or rhyme, 
But we shall sit beside the silver springs 

" That flow from God's own footstool, and behold 
Sages and martyrs, and those blessed few 
Who loved us once and were beloved of old. 
To dwell with them and walk with them anew. 

" In alternations of sublime repose — 
Musical motion — the perpetual play 
Of every faculty that heaven bestows, 

Through the bright, busy, and eternal day." 



294 BOSTON DAYS 



A poet must always be taken for what he is and not 
asked for that which he is not. It would be idle to 
find fault with Dr. Parsons because he had not that 
universal message to humanity which we ask of our 
immortals. His was a very rich and lovable nature 
when touclied aright. He was out of harmony with all 
save the choicer and rarer natures, and he was not a 
philosopher or a reformer or a humanitarian, but an 
artist who loved his art, and who loved religion through 
art. He was a devout Anglican Catholic. 

The more aesthetic form of religion in the rich sym- 
bolism of extreme ritualistic worship appealed to him 
as no less decorative form would do. His religious emo- 
tion was a poet's ecstasy, rapt, intense, and not the 
spiritual perception that characterized Lowell and 
Whittier. Any trace of Puritanism was peculiarly 
distasteful to him. His was the tropical nature ; and he 
was, to all intents and purposes, an Italian born in 
New England. He was the born translator and inter- 
preter of Dante, without that innate lofty nobleness of 
spirit, incommensurately great, of the immortal Italian. 

The secret of the incongruity between lofty and 
notable work and personal obscurity lay in his tempera- 
ment. He was not in touch with general life. He 
was indifferent to fame, indifferent to any practical 
contact with the literary market. A social recluse, 
beloved by his intimate friends, appreciated by fastidious 
and critical tastes, — he asked no more of life. 

Dr. Parsons was much better known in Italy than in 
America. In Florence, on his visiting that city in 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 295 

1867, he was honored with an ovation, crowned with 
laurel, and presented with the freedom of the city. 
The one fellow-author and friend who could best have 
interpreted Dr. Parsons to the world was Mr. Whipple, 
in whom insight became divination, and recognition 
clairvoyance. But that " wand of magic power " in 
the pen of Edwin P. Whipple was stilled before the 
death of Dr. Parsons and the interested student of his 
unique individuality and gifts must perhaps look to his 
work alone to grasp the qualities of the man. 

Thomas William Parsons was born in Boston, Aug. 
18, 1819, in the same year with Lowell, Whipple, 
Curtis, Prof. Benjamin Peirce, Julia Ward Howe, and 
others who make that year indeed a memorable date. 

He graduated at Harvard and took his degree at the 
Medical School, but curiously became a dentist which was 
his trade, while literature was his profession and poetry 
his passion. At the age of seventeen he visited Italy, 
and doubtless his whole nature was colored and stimulated 
by that experience in the direction of his Italian studies. 
His translation of Dante's " Inferno " was published in 
1867, with Dora's illustrations. In that year he again 
passed some time in Europe, and the translations from 
Dante he had published previous to this time insured 
him the warmest reception at Florence. He was 
honored with a public reception, crowned with laurel, 
and presented with the freedom of the city. A fete 
was given in his honor and he was drawn in a chariot 
about the streets by the enthusiastic Florentines. 
While in Boston, so quiet and secluded has been his 



296 BOSTON DAYS 



life that half the fairly intelligent, if not the cultivated 
population, have perhaps hardly heard his name. 

The readers of the " Atlantic Monthly " will remember 
his occasional contributions. His best-known poem is 
the " Lines on a Bust of Dante." It was written from 
a statuette brought to Mr. Whipple by Charles Sumner 
as a gift, and which stands now in the library of Mrs. 
Whipple's home. This poem has been quoted and 
referred to so much that, as Mrs. Whipple relates, Dr. 
Parsons was fairly impatient and irritable over it 
because all his other work was ignored in comparison. 
But it is one of the noblest poems in the English 
language. One stanza runs : — 

" Faithful if this wan image be, 

No dream his life was — but a Light. 
Could any Beatrice see 

A lover in that anchorite ! 
To that cold Ghibelline's gloomy sight 

Who could have guessed the visions came 
Of Beauty, veiled with heavenly light, 

In circles of eternal flame." 

Dr. Parsons died in 1892 at his home by the sea in 
Scituate. His death was a tragic one but whether the 
result of accident or intention has never been absolutely 
known. A curious atmosphere of gloom invested the 
family. His sister, Mrs. Lunt, was a woman of unusual 
gifts and charm, but a mental malady came upon her 
and for all one summer she was carefully watched and 
guarded, in her seaside house at Scituate, by nurses 
and friends. Her only daughter, Francesca, Countess 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 297 

d'Aulby, and the Count, her French son-in-law, were 
with her. Early one morning, before the dawn, the 
Count and Countess were both awakened, conscious 
of some influence or presence so depressing tliat they 
could not sleep nor remain in the room. Almost with 
one accord they sought the parlor, and kept — they 
knew not why — their vigil. Soon after daylight it 
was discovered that Mrs. Lunt had eluded the vigilance 
of the night nurse, and was not in the house. Search 
far and wide was made. A milkman, going on his 
early rounds, related that he had seen her crossing the 
meadow, and that she had stopped, gazing into a pool 
of water. At last after anxious and agonizing hours, 
her body was found in the well close to the house. She 
had been dead for hours. With the cunning of insanity 
she had climbed down a deep well by the stones and 
found barely water enough to drown herself. The 
shock of the death of her brother, Dr. Parsons, had 
been one too severe for her delicate organization and 
doubtless precipitated this tragedy. 

Mrs. INlaria S. Porter, in a beautiful tribute to Mrs. 
Lunt, thus speaks of the family : — 

" Mrs. Lunt was distinctively a lady of the old school, 
a representative Bostonian, not of the Boston of to-day, 
but of the past. She was iu close sympathy and touch 
with the stars in our literary firmament, that remarkable 
coterie of men and women who have made the fame of 
Boston. Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, Whip- 
ple, Peirce, were the intimate associates of her beloved 
brother, the late Thomas William Parsons, a poet known 
to scholars and to all lovers of poetry throughout the 



298 BOSTON DAYS 



English-speaking world. Mrs. Lunt had great versatility 
and a felicitous expression of her thought, both in prose 
and verse. 

"Many of Mrs. iLuut's sonnets are very fine, and 
obtained recognition at once from some of the best of 
our poets. A few of them may be found in the well- 
known collections of poetry, notably in that made by 
Oscar Fay Adams, called ' Through the Year with the 
Poets ; ' also in the book of American sonnets selected 
by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Some years ago 
I sent Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes a poem of Mrs. 
Luut's entitled ' The Days that Come Back,' of which 
he said : 

" 'So many beautiful lyrics have come from her brilliant 
pen, of which one entitled To One who Kuoweth is 
sufficient to show her metric skill and knowledge of verse, 
and the philosophic feeling displaj^ed in the beautiful 
thought it contains is of masculine strength. Certainly 
Mrs. Lunt is one, if not the foremost, of the women poets 
of America. . . . Her desire, as in the case of her 
brother (the late Thomas William Parsons), for privacy, 
her dislike of anything like notoriety, has done much to 
narrow the circle of her influence as a verse-writer. Now 
that she has passed beyond the ken of this world, it is to 
be hoped that those who have her work intact ma}', 
before long, give a volume of such precious lines as hers 
to the world. You have been one of the few who were 
constantly in touch with her inner life, and therefore so 
well able to say so much more than I can of the intel- 
lectual work of our lamented friend.' " 

All this is touched upon here as illustrative of 
some fateful temperament that neither the poet nor his 
sister understood how to overcome. There have al- 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 299 

ways been such instances of disaster and wreck and 
ruin in the annals of literature and art. Byron, Pee, 
and others that could be named furnish examples. In 
this more spiritual age into which we are now living, 
with the larger knowledge of the ways and means of 
controlling forces and remedying defects in character, 
these instances will grow less. The knowledge of the 
law of vibration, of the potent and all-determining 
power involved in a true knowledge of concentration, 
will exalt all the conditions of life and re-create charac- 
ter. But this is a matter of modern science. 

The supreme work of Dr. Parsons, as has already 
been noted, was in his translations from Dante. This 
work extended over a period of fifty-five years. In his 
early youth he visited Italy ; he walked enchanted with 
Dante in Florence and Ravenna, and as a youth of 
twenty-three he was rendering in English portions of the 
" Divina Commedia." " To render Dante properly," 
he' said, " requires somewhat of Dante's moods, time 
and toil ; fasting and solitude are not amiss." 

Dr. Parsons had the same temperamental sym- 
pathy for Dante that Edward Fitzgerald evinced for 
Omar Khayyam, yet was he not alone in his love for 
the Italian poet. There existed in Cambridge a 
Dante society of twelve members, of which Mr. Long- 
fellow, and later Mr. Lowell, was the president. Dr. 
Parsons and Charles Eliot Norton were among its 
illustrious members. 

The Dante translations of Dr. Parsons are fragment- 
ary, but include the " Hell " complete, the " Purgatorio " 



300 BOSTON DAYS 



in part, and beginnings of "The Paradiso." How- 
beautiful are these lines from the first canto ! — 

" The glory of him who moveth all he made 
Shines through the universe with piercing splendor, 
In one part more and elsewhere less displayed. 
Up in that heaven that most receives his light 
I was, and saw things that no mortal being 
Coming down thence could tell or knows to write, 
Because an intellect approaching so 
Toward its desire, to such a height is carried 
That back the memory hath not power to go. 
Truly, whatever treasure I could gain 
For my remembrance of that holy kingdom 
Shall make material now for this my strain." 

Among the lyrics of Dr. Parsons are several inscribed 
to his favorite niece, Francesca Lunt, now the Countess 
d'Aulby, who is a musical artist of the choicest quality. 
One of these closes with this stanza : — 

" So feel I when Francesca sings, Francesca sings ; 
My thoughts mount upward ; I am dead 
To every sense of vulgar things, 

And on celestial highways tread, 
With prophets of the olden time — 
Those minstrel beings, the men sublime — 
The men sublime." 

Many of his poems, like that of the Paradiso stanzas, 
are inspired by lines from Dante. 

The only true estimate of Dr. Parsons — of his higher 
self, the immortal self — is gained in studying his work. 
Outwardly his life had the uneventfulness of the scholar 
and the recluse. He was a man of the most brilliant 
gifts, of exceptionally lovely and tender qualities within 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 301 

his own quiet and select circle, and he was deeply 
beloved as the friend and companion in high thought 
and poetic art by such men as Longfellow, Lowell, 
Whipple, and Charles Eliot Norton. 

" His feet are in thy courts, O Lord ; his ways 

Are in the city of the living God. 
Beside the eternal sources of the days 

He dwells, his thoughts with tireless lightning shod ; 
His hours are exaltations and desires, 

The soul itself its only period, 
And life unmeasured save as it aspires. 

One sunset hour in the library of Dr. Holmes was in- 
separably associated with the memory of Dr. Parsons. 
The Autocrat had just returned from a call on his 
friend and brother poet who was ill, and to whom he 
had carried flowers, the narcissus, " the poet's flower," 
as he said, and the little talk drifted to poets and 
poetry. He spoke particularly of Dr. Parsons as a 
poet in whose handling language became exquisite art. 
Words, "the medium vulgarized by everybody's hand- 
ling," made the author's art a more difficult one, he 
said, than that of the artist on canvas, or clay, or in 
music. It is as if one who would carve in wood were 
obliged to go out and gather rails and fence boards for 
his material. 

The question was asked why Dr. Parsons had not 
fame commensurate with his rare genius, and the Auto- 
crat replied that he had the most appreciative recog- 
nition of his genius among scholars and the choice few, 
but that he had written too little to have become 



302 BOSTON DAYS 



widely known in the popular sense. Dr. Holmes also 
instanced that a great part of his literary work is in 
translations, and this, while perhaps it should, yet does 
not always gain for the writer the fame that it should 
command. In the intense devotion of Dr. Parsons to 
Dante ; in the absorbing study he has given to him ; the 
sympathetic interpretation he has produced of the great- 
est of Italian poets, — one of the three world poets, as 
Prof. Wm. T. Harris well classifies Dante, — to these 
Dr. Holmes attributed the choice felicity of style, the 
exquisite literary art that characterized Dr. Parsons, — 
an art on which the Autocrat seemed to love to linger. 
The name of Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton is always 
one to conjure with; and her cosmopolitan life united 
with her sympathetic and winning personality, has al- 
ways given her a very wide range of friends in Europe 
as well as in our own country, and few are the weeks in 
which some visiting celebrity of interest is not met at 
her receptions. Here will be found the most inclusive 
and varied assembly in Boston. There will be authors 
and artists, the great ecclesiastic and the struggling 
worker in various lines ; the noted Harvard professor, 
the great lecturer, the reigning beauty of the hour, the 
distinguished actor or opera singer, the most fashionable 
of portrait painters, the noblest architect, the profound 
philosophical writer, or tlie unknown undergraduate. 
One will meet at Mrs. jMoulton's charming weekly recep- 
tions the notable people in every art or calling, and also 
those whose claim to consideration may not be less genu- 
ine because not generally recognized. Very interesting 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 303 

in their souveuirs are Mrs. Moulton's drawing-rooms ; 
Vedder and Greenough, and Robert Barrett Browning 
are represented among artists, — all with autograph in- 
scriptions ; there is a choice copy of Poe's " Raven " 
translated into French by Stephen Mallarmd, one of the 
intimate friends of Mrs. Moulton's Parisian life, and it 
is illustrated by ]Manet, — the copy being the combined 
gift of painter and poet ; there are oil paintings from 
celebrated artists ; a water-color from Rollin Tilton ; a 
vigorous black-and-white sketch of a famous group of 
trees at Bordighera by Charles Caryl Coleman, presented 
by him ; a number of excellent sketches by Winthrop 
Pierce, of Boston, one of the most poetic of landscapists, 
illustrating poems of Mrs. Moulton's, among which are 
" Come Back, Dear Days ; " and one of these sketches 
showing a brilliant sunrise, illustrates the line : " The 
morning skies were all aflame," from one of her poems. 
Another still of these lovely sketches of Mr. Pierce's 
has a group of shadow faces, with the line, " I see your 
gentle ghosts arise." 

Many are the rare books in autograph copies given to 
Mrs. Moulton by her friends abroad, — copies presented 
by Lord Houghton, George Eliot, Tennyson, Jean Inge- 
low, Christina Rossetti, Oswald Crawford, George Mere- 
dith, Robert Louis Stevenson, O'Shaughnessy, and many 
others. Robert Browning wrote to her when her col- 
lection of poems under the title of " Swallow Flights," 
appeared : — 

" I close the book only when needs I must — at page 
the last, with music in uiy ears and flowers before ray 



304 BOSTON DAYS 



eyes, not without thoughts across the brain. Pray con- 
tinue your ' Flights,' and be assured of the sympathetic 
observance of Yours, 

" Robert Browning." 

Mrs. Moulton's home on Rutland Square is a very 
literary and social Mecca on her " Fridays." Pleasant 
social interchange speeds the hours, and the sympathetic 
charm of the hostess holds its spell for each and all. 

Louise Chandler Moulton, born in Pomfret, Conn., 
came to Boston as a bride in her earliest youth. At 
the age of fifteen she had begun to see in print 
what, almost from childhood, she had written. At 
eighteen a volume of stories from her pen, entitled 
" This, That, and the Other," was published by a Boston 
house. Any determinate choice of literary life had not 
presented itself to her. She wrote as the flowers bud 
and bloom, as the bird sings, because it was the law of 
her life to write. Each individual life, like the growth 
of the plant-world, has within itself its own law of 
development to which it must conform, and to the bril- 
liant and imaginative young girl her songs and stories 
were a blossoming expression rather than a conscious 
achievement. In her school life in Mrs. Willard's semi- 
nary at Troy she appears, as Mrs. Harriet Spofford has 
said, " to have combined studying and writing and love- 
making to a rather remarkable degree, as in six weeks 
after leaving school she became the wife of Mr. William 
Moulton, the editor and publisher of a weekly journal 
in Boston." Years of exhilarating life and literary 
achievement followed. The winning hostess, the ac- 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GEXICS 305 

knowledged author of two successful novels, her name 
recognized and praised, she was fairly launched into that 
inspirational atmosphere to which she was so respon- 
sive. She contributed to " Harper's," the " Atlantic," 
" Galaxy," and " Scribner's," and not the least of her 
work has been that done for children, for whom she had 
a peculiar gift in writing. 

It was in 1876 that Mrs. Moulton first went abroad, 
taking with her letters of introduction to a brilliant 
English circle which has ever since welcomed her 
annual visits. Her initial introduction to the London 
literati was at a breakfast given in her honor by Lord 
Houghton, at which Robert Browning, Swinburne, 
George Eliot, Kingslake, Gustave Dore, Jean Ingelow, 
Thomas Hardy, and other notabilities, were guests. 
Soon after, her first volume of poems, '■' Swallow 
Flights/' was published in both London and Boston, 
and flashed into instant fame. This has been followed 
by two exquisite collections called " In the Garden of 
Dreams " and " At the Wind's Will " with several 
volumes of romance and travel. 

In all Mrs. Moulton's work one finds that subtle, 
elusive sense of spiritual suggestion as if the poet were 
living between the two worlds of the seen and the 
unseen, and bringing, half unconsciously, strange, swift 
perceptions from the unknown. Yet with this spiritual 
outlook there is the human love and longing. 

Coulson Kernalian, the well-known English critic, 
says of ]Mrs. Moulton : " Hers is the sweetest woman 
voice which has come to us across the wide Atlantic." 

20 



306 BOSTON DAYS 



Mrs. Moulton holds, indeed, a very unique and charming 
place in the twofold world of letters and of society. 
How a woman of letters can find so much leisure for 
society, or how a woman of society can achieve such 
pre-eminent distinction in literary art, is always an 
interesting study. Perhaps the secret lies in a very 
exceptional personality, one born to dominate and 
which yet conquers unconsciously, if it may be so ex- 
pressed, by its irresistible charm ; that need ask no aid 
from the strength, underlying it. For when the gods 
bestow their supreme gift — charm — the recipient need 
ask nothing more of fortune ; it is all good gifts in one. 
To a remarkable degree Mrs. Moulton has this gift. 

Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford is often to be found 
in the home of Mrs. Moulton, and while Boston has not 
been able to allure her to leave her romantic home in 
old Newburyport to dwell within view of the Golden 
Dome, she is still a frequent and charming figure in the 
Boston days. Among the first contributors to the 
" Atlantic " Mrs. Spofford early won national recogni- 
tion as a poet and romancist, — a fame that widens with 
time. 

Louisa Alcott was one of the familiar spirits at the 
Whipples, where she was often to be found on their 
famous Sunday evenings. The demands of household 
life in Concord conflicted with that exclusive devotion 
required by the muse of creative literature, and she 
would fly to her "Gamp's Garret," as before noted 
in these pages, whose precise locality was concealed 
as far as possible in view of the endless invasions that 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 307 



a more authoritative knowledge of its whereabouts 
would inevitably insure. Mrs. Stowe, who was a fre- 
quent guest of Mr. and Mrs. Fields, also came and 
went, and Colonel Higginson related this amusing 
incident of a dinner given by the Atlantic Club to 
Mrs. Stowe just before her first departure for Europe. 
It was the only dinner to which ladies were invited, 
and Mrs. Stowe accepted, relates Colonel Higginson, on 
condition that no wine should be offered. It seems, 
however, that only two ladies were present ; the guest of 
honor, Mrs. Stowe, and JMrs. Harriet Prescott SpofFord, 
then Miss Prescott. The ladies had been left alone 
together a short time, and on Colonel Higginsou's 
inquiry of Miss SpofFord as to what she and the author 
of " Uncle Tom " had talked of for the three-quarters 
of an hour, she replied : " Nothing, except that she 
asked me what o'clock it was, and I told her I did n't 
know." 

Ernst Perabo, the great artist and musical composer, 
was another of the most prized friends of Mrs. Whipple's 
choice circle. 

" To hear Mr. Perabo play." This has been the half- 
mystic, half-reverent phrase now and then passed around 
among the choicest lovers of art in Boston, always 
uttered with the feeling : " Let us be silent, that we 
may hear the whisper of the gods." For Ernst Perabo 
is not only a great artist ; he is a great man. He has 
the heroic character, — a nature so generous, so noble, 
so exalted, and withal so tender and infinitely sympa- 
thetic. He has the literary appreciations and affiliations 



308 BOSTON DAYS 



of u man of letters — a man to whom literature was his 
only specialty. He has the genius for friendship and 
those who have enjoyed the rare quality of the personal 
presence and companionship of Mr. Perabo feel that life is 
forever enriched thereby. Abroad Mr. Perabo is known 
as a great pianist and as the greatest living interpreter 
of Beethoven ; but in Boston, his chosen home, he is 
not only recognized as the celebrated musical artist, but 
as friend, critic, counsellor, and inspirer. 

Nature was prodigal in her gifts to him, — his rare 
beauty and distinction of presence, his gentle dignity, 
his winning sweetness of manner, and exquisite courtesy, 
combined, too, with the overflow of immortal energies 
and the impressiveness of great qualities of mind and 
heart. 

To hear Mr. Perabo interpret Beethoven, Schubert, 
Bach, is a joy for a lifetime. His marvellous technique, 
his refinement of expression, tlie depth of significance 
whose inner meaning his rendering translates, — the 
singular exaltation of the entire atmosphere, — it is all 
beyond the power of words to describe. Mr. Perabo 
is the artist who keeps alive the coal upon the altar, — 
the divine flame of ideal purpose. " In music," he 
says, " Bach is my ideal — the most adorable spirit, and 
one who was worthy to set the finest passages of the 
Bible to music. Beethoven is very great and beau- 
tiful, soul-stirring, and satisfactory, but less distant, 
more affectionate ; and of all the most winning and 
lovable, yet strong and honest, with infinite resources 
of richness, purity, and heavenly joy is Franz Schubert." 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 309 

Ideally, a great artist should also be a great man, a 
noble character. This ideal is signally fulfilled in Ernst 
Perabo. 

It was somewhere in 1860 that Lowell wrote to 
Hawthorne a letter introducing Mr. Howells, and here 
is the picture he drew, forty years ago, of the well- 
known novelist : — 

" He wants to look at you," wrote Lowell, " which will 
do you no harm, aud do him a great deal of good. His 
name is Howells, and he is fine young fellow, and has 
written several poems in the ' Atlantic,' which of course 
you have never read because you don't do such things 
yourself and are old enough to know better." 

Mr. Howells, then a young poet of twenty-three, 
had already given hostages to fortune in the guise of 
two or three poems contributed to the " Atlantic " and 
he came as a passionate pilgrim to the modern Athens. 

At this time he was yet standing, however uncon- 
sciously, on the threshold of his kingdom ; but the 
literary tribunal that had already pledged him recog- 
nition of his power and their convictions that he had a 
future, could yet have little dreamed of that latent 
power in the young man which was destined later to 
enter into American literature as a transforming and 
almost as a revolutionary force. 

Still — such is the power of the unconscious in life 
to assume rhythmic and fitting form — this new era of 
literary activity, undreamed of by the actors, was ap- 
propriately ushered in. 



310 BOSTON DAYS 



Mr. Lowell gave a dinner in honor of the young 
poet, with Dr. Holmes and James T. Fields as the 
only other guests, and in the postprandial conversation 
the host remarked : " This is the laying on of hands ; 
it is our literary apostolic succession." 

More deeply true than Mr. Lowell could have 
dreamed were his words. They were deeply prophetic, 
and that pictorial hour is enshrined in literary history. 

" Out of the quiet ways 
Into the world's broad track," 

had the young poet wandered : out from a Western 
country home of refined sweetness and simplicity ; a 
home of high thinking and plain living ; a home fur- 
nished with ideals rather than with bric-k-brac and 
virtu, — from this, led by the unconscious illumination 
of his genius, he had come to test his powers in the 
light of the public square. 

The prince and potentate are not more regally born 
than the children of some of the families settled in the 
Middle West. Especially was the " Western Reserve " 
of Ohio a locality of the gently bred and refined people. 
It was here that Nathan Cook Meeker, afterward 
associated with Horace Greeley on the editorial staff of 
the " New York Tribune," and who was the founder of 
Greeley, Colorado, lived in the early years of his married 
life ; and here was born his son, Ralph Meeker, now 
an eminent journalist in New York and the author of 
some of the most charming magazine papers, whose poetic 
touch lays upon the reader the spell of enchantment. 




If ill ij red Howells 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 311 

In this " Western Reserve " Mr. Howells was born, 
into an atmosphere of high ideals, and the story of his 
life reminds one of Emerson's words : " Give a youth 
manners and accomplishments, and he need not take 
the trouble to earn palaces ; they will open and entreat 
him to enter. ' 

Mr. Howells had these gifts and accomplishments, and 
it is perhaps not too much to say that his temperament 
has been his fortune. His poise, his sweetness of spirit, 
his gentle and courteous dignity, his fastidious delicacy, 
have inevitably opened to him the best that life contains. 
It is a curious little fact that at the early age of twenty- 
nine Mr. Howells had entered into the noblest and 
greatest companionships that this world can offer. 

As a youth he had started out on that Wanderjahre 
whose story he so exquisitely tells in his " New 
England Pilgrimage." He was first received and then 
beloved. After that came his first residence abroad. 
In Paris he met a girl art student. Miss Eleanor 
Mead, a sister of the distinguished sculptor, Larkin G. 
Mead, and wooed and won her away and carried her 
as a fair bride to an old ducal palace in Venice where 
their first wedded life was passed. Here was born 
their eldest child, Winifred, — the child of poetry and 
dreams, whose brief and beautiful life has left its sweet 
records in the poems written by her girlish hand. A 
beautiful picture of this poetic and lovely girl painted 
by Helen M. Knowlton, of Boston, is in the library of 
their home, — an ideal face against a golden back- 
ground. Miss Knowlton has the genius of color, and 



312 BOSTON DAYS 



this work is one of the most interesting among all her 
paintings. 

When, after the first period of Mr. Howells' residence 
abroad he returned at the age of twenty-nine, taking 
up his residence in Cambridge, he was welcomed into 
the close companionship of Longfellow, Lowell, Charles 
Eliot Norton, and Henry James, pere. To enter 
the mere conventional and fashionable society is a 
matter of external accident ; but spiritual fitness alone 
could enter within this circle of choice spirits. Mr. 
Longfellow was then translating Dante, and one evening 
a week this little group met at his home for an evening 
of listening to the work, with comments on its progress 
which was discussed over an informal supper. 

In later years Mr. Howells, with his family, returned 
to Boston, and lived variously for some years in 
Belmont — a beautiful town six miles out, where they 
had a charming villa on a pine hill — and on Beacon 
Street, only one or two doors from the house of Dr. 
Holmes. During their latest sojourn in Boston, for 
a winter only, they had an apartment on Common- 
wealth Avenue, where they looked out upon that 
magnificent thoroughfare with its double boulevard and 
esplanade of trees and statues. From their drawing- 
room windows they could catch an enchanting view of 
the sunset over the blue line of the Brookline Hills 
far away over the park, with the romantic statue of 
Leif Ericson — the work of Anne Whitney — silhou- 
etted against the western sky. Nothing more simple 
and sweet than the home life of the Howells family 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 313 

can be imagined. It is full of charm and gayety, 
and if, at an informal tea on Sunday evening, a guest 
or two may drop in, and some glancing allusion occurs 
to poem or passage which perhaps at the moment no 
one can place, the book is brought in, the elusive phrase 
captured, and all details of outward living are held 
flexible and plastic to this ideal and responsive spirit. 
To lose Mr. Howells from Boston was to lose one of 
the most ideal home centres of the present literary life. 

Interesting souvenirs were scattered through the 
rooms. In one there was an original water-color by 
Fortuny presented to Mr. Howells, with a special little 
history of its own ; a picture by Rossetti, and one by 
Alma-Tadema, with " To My Dear Howells " in the 
artist's writing in the corner, and many other bits of 
artistic value and association. In an adjoining room 
some old pictures from Florence were displayed, and 
out of the larger room was a delightful little alcove 
furnished with a sofa and a writing-desk. 

At this time Mr. and Mrs. Howells had returned 
to Boston from New York to be near their only son, 
John Howells, who graduated from Harvard that year, 
and went later to Paris to study art and architecture. 
The family now includes only this son and a daughter, 
Mildred, so pleasantly known to the reading world as 
the " Little Girl among the Old Masters," in that 
most unique of art books bearing this title. The " little 
girl " is a tall, slender maiden now, and while she is 
called a beauty and a belle, she is more, — a brilliant 
girl intellectually, with cultivated artistic and literary 



314 BOSTON DAYS 



tastes, and with much of that atmosphere of poetic 
enchantment about her. Mrs. Ho wells is always in 
delicate health, but she is so spirituelie, so captivating, 
so full of charm, that one forgets to inquire how she is 
feeling. Was it Hannah More's physician who was so 
beguiled by her conversation during one of his pro- 
fessional calls that he forgot to inquire for the health 
of his patient. Mrs. Ho wells goes out very little, but 
is usually able to see her friends who come in, and an 
hour with her is one of the utmost enchantment. 
She has tasted the fine flavors of art and literature and 
society, and is the truly cultivated woman, for cultiva- 
tion and mere acquirement are two very different things. 
Mrs. Howells has divination, esprit, and that nameless 
sympathy for which we have no adequate term, and 
which the Italians call simpatica. 

Mr. Howells has that very rare gift — and one seldom 
defined — of taking impressions. " We will go together 
to an entertainment," once said Mrs. Howells laugh- 
ingly, "and I will talk it over when we get home 
and then forget all about it ; but twenty years later 
Mr. Howells, who has not even spoken of the occasion, 
will write it all out with perfect accuracy of detail and 
of complete presentation." 

To be able to take an impression is of itself a supreme 
gift. More than that, it is the very rarest of gifts. It 
is produced by an exquisite balance of imaginative 
perception, of sensitiveness, of delicacy, of poise. The 
mind of Mr. Howells is like a sensitive plate, or like a 
mirror on which the reflection falls and is retained. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 315 



Few of the great men have been more fortunate 
ill their domestic life than has Mr. Howells. If he 
impresses and enchains, what shall one say of Mrs. 
Howells, the most responsive, the most sympathetic, 
the most spontaneous of women ? She is a veritable en- 
chantress. She has read everything, seen everything, 
taken in the most subtle significance of the latest play, 
the new novel, the new movement in art, literature, 
what you will. She is many-faceted, and sparkles at 
every turn. She is the artist in temperament, as well 
as in taste and study. 

In the early eighties, Mr. Howells began reproducing 
certain salient phases of Boston life dramatized in his 
novel, " The Rise of Silas Lapham," and in otliers. Dur- 
ing a part of this time he was also the editor of the 
" Atlantic," in which office he was succeeded by Mr. 
Aldrich. 

Novel-writing, Mr. Howells believes, should be a 
work of later life in order that the work may have any 
value. A young person reproduces his reading, not his 
life. " It is easy to do the fanciful. It is difficult to 
get the reality," he says. Of course, there are those who 
believe in imagination as truer than fact and who say 
that reality lies in the ideal, and not in the actual 
occurrence. 

Unquestionably Mr. Howells now stands as the lead- 
ing man in American literature ; as our first and most 
representative man of letters. This is not to say that 
his specific work as novelist and poet transcends the poems 
and novels of other authors, but that, since the pass- 



316 BOSTON DAYS 



ing of Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell, he is the most 
conspicuous figure. He stands for much. He unites 
two things that are not seldom regarded as incompat- 
ible, — fastidious culture and the deepest sympathy for 
humanity. Lowell's love for humanity was largely 
in the abstract, in high poetic moods. He loved the 
Southern slaves as an idea when he might not, perhaps, 
be over-gracious to the Philistine encountered in a street 
car. Longfellow was overflowing with love and sweet- 
ness, but it had not developed into the thoughtful 
philosophy for the bettering of humanity as has that 
same tenderness of nature in Mr. Howells. In short, 
Mr. Howells is not only a great writer, but a great man. 
" Howells is the only one of us who has been the favor- 
ite of Fortune uniformly," remarked a literary friend, but 
it may be a question as to whether Fortune is arbitrary 
in her favors. 

" Deep in the man sits fast his fate, 
To mould his fortune rich or great," 

says Emerson. Mr. Howells is a great man, for he not 
only writes, but lives ; and his charm of manner, his 
genial humor, his sincere and exquisite courtesy and 
delicate tact make him the most interesting of conver- 
sationalists and delightful of friends. 

He talks freely when asked of his own work and 
literary aims and beliefs. His range of selection in the 
series of vivid and almost photographic presentations of 
certain marked phases of society is determined by the 
special idea to be illustrated by means of this grouping. 
As a novelist he may be said to be the prophet of the 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 317 

present ; he is intensely modern ; he is an earnest 
student of conditions and their tendencies ; he is look- 
ing deeply into life on every side ; nothing escapes him ; 
nothing is trivial to him. His novels form a gallery of 
portraiture almost presenting the coniMie huniaine of 
American life. 

A poet born, Mr. Howells made himself the novelist. 
Twoscore of years ago his keen literary instincts told him 
that prose romance was the coming literature. He 
believed in his star and followed the oracle. It is they 
who have the strength to follow this higher vision who 
succeed ; those who do not fail. It is the law and the 
prophets. 

Mr. Howells has now forsaken Boston for New 
York, but his life in the modern Athens was a factor of 
importance in its most brilliant literary period. 

Mr. Francis Parkman was one of the most remark- 
able men in the Boston group that made the Nineteenth 
century so marked an epoch in the history of letters, 
and his character and relation to his time invite as well 
as baffle scrutiny. His nature was a curious mingling 
of sympathy and frankness and of reserve even to the 
degree of isolation. He held his personal life and his 
expression in literature to be entirely separate, and, too, 
he lived largely in a lofty world of thought companioned 
in some inscrutable way by response and inspiration 
from other sources than those of the visible world. 

" Who loves the music of the spheres 
And lives on earth, must close his ears 
To many voices that he hears." 



318 BOSTON DAYS 



Mr. Parkman loved the music of the spheres. And 
a key to his character may be found in these words 
from his own writings. "There is," he says, "a 
universal law of growth and achievement. The man 
who knows himself, understands his own powers and 
aptitudes, forms purposes in accord with them and pur- 
sues these purposes steadily, is the man of success." 
Mr. Parkman's early aims were those revealed to him 
by the unconscious attraction of genius ; but soon, 
even in his undergraduate days, he became consciously 
aware of them, and from that time until his death he 
pursued them with that intelligent and inflexible pur- 
pose which compels success. His biographer, Mr, 
Farnham, says of Mr. Parkman that his "■ physical 
organism was strangely compounded of strength and 
weakness. It lacked that equilibrium of forces which 
secures health and makes consecutive labor possible," he 
continues, and he notes that as his eyes failed him while 
in college his brain suffered from this cause that limited 
and sometimes prevented intellectual work ; that his 
senses were not developed to a degree that allowed 
him to receive acute impressions from sound, color, 
odors, taste, or touch ; and this range of limitation 
resulted in producing a character " marked by a few 
simple and elementary powers rather than by delicacy, 
subtlety, and variety of sensibilities and emotions. His 
entire personality was moulded by the master quality 
of manliness. Impetuosity, courage, honesty, energy, 
reserve, a practical turn of mind, and an iron will were 
his chief forces." His life owed little to scenic effect. 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 319 

He was born in 1823, tlie eldest son of Rev. Francis 
Parkman, D.D. ; he graduated from Harvard in the 
class of '44, one of his classmates being the celebrated 
astronomer, Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould. In college 
vacations he visited the White Mountain regions and 
Lake George, and while at Ticonderoga his imagination 
was fascinated by historic facts and traditions which 
took possession of him and initiated that dramatic 
presentation of history with which his name was 
destined to be resplendently identified. It would 
almost seem as if Mr. Parkman read inscriptions traced 
on air amid the scenes of the Old French War, or 
where the Conspiracy of Pontiac was devised. During 
his life he made occasional trips to Europe where his 
time was passed mainly in Paris, and he visited Canada 
more than once, and also made expeditions to Florida 
and to the Rocky Mountain regions and the far West 
in search of and verification of his historic material. 
He was one of the founders, and served as the first 
president, of the St. Botolph Club in Boston. Mr. 
Parkman died in 1893 leaving the world enriched by 
the results of more than forty years of the most pains- 
taking, accurate, and thorough historic research vivified 
by a dramatic vein of power that fairly re-created scene, 
actors, and circumstance before the eye of the reader. 

One of the most impressive things in the literary 
production of the entire Nineteenth century is the 
process by which Mr. Parkman arrived at his pictu- 
resque, vital and pictorial transcriptions of historic 
events. He was the magician who had devised the 



320 BOSTON DAYS 



secret spell by which to conjure up the entire li\ang 
panorama out of the buried past. 

Deprived of tlie use of his eyes, he was compelled to 
be companioned in his library researches by an educated 
man who read aloud to him the varied documents that 
he needed to consult. Could he have read for himself, 
a glance would often have been sufficient to reveal the 
worth or worthlessness, of any given paper ; but as he 
must get its contents through the medium of hearing, 
the entire matter must be read. There was great 
drudgery of work in the extended copying essential to 
his plans. In London, Paris, and in Canada he had 
literary experts at work transcribing and verifying his- 
toric data. Mr. Farnliam quotes a letter which Mr. 
Parkman wrote (in June of '68) to his classmate, Dr. 
Gould, the eminent astronomer, which reveals the reli- 
able accuracy which underlies all his work : — 

" I believe there is a difference [writes Mr. Parkman to 
Dr. Gould] between the way of estimating latitude in the 
Seventeenth century and now. Can you without much 
trouble tell me how this is ? In 1685 La Salle calculated 
a certain point on the Gulf of Mexico at 28° 18'. What 
would this correspond with on a modern map? How can 
I ascertain if a comet — • a somewhat remarkable one — 
was visible from the site of Peoria, Illinois, in January, 
1681? Also, how can I ascertain on what day of the 
month Easter Monday, 1680, occurred? I want the 
information to test the accuracy of certain journals in 
my possession." 

The supreme value of Mr. Parkman's historical works, 
however, is not limited to his faithful, accurate, and vivid 



THE GOLDEN AGE OF GENIUS 321 

reproductions of the past, in a moving panorama, before 
the eyes of the reader ; but he carried his work into the 
realm of philosophic and spiritual insight and demanded 
of each phase of civilization the results it produced in 
humanity. 

Mr. Parkman's series of works dealing with France 
and England in North America (" Pioneers of France 
in the New World," " The Jesuits in North America," 
" La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," " The 
Old Regime," " Count Frontenac and New France 
under Louis XIV.," "Montcalm and Wolfe," and 
" A Half Century of Conflict ") are a contribution to 
permanent literature that is indispensable to scholarly 
knowledge, to that culture of thought based on data 
and information and, as well, also, these works are 
indispensable to a true intellectual grasp of the relations 
of events to the general trend and the progress of civili- 
zation. The literary quality of Mr. Parkman's style is so 
fine as to make his works an education in belles-lettres ; 
and he remains a spiritual hero of the Nineteenth 
century amid the choice group who made that wonder- 
ful period when 

" The total air was fame." 



21 



IV 



THE DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH 
CENTURY 



In the years that shall be ye shall harness the Powers of the 

ether, 
And drive them with reins as a steed. 

Ye shall ride as a Power of the air, on a Force that is bridled, 
On a saddled Element leap. 

And the dead whom ye loved ye shall walk with, and speak with 

the lost. 
The delusion of Death shall pass, 

The delusion of mounded earth, the apparent withdrawal ; 
Ye shall shed your bodies, and upward flutter to freedom. 

Stephen Phillips. 



THE DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 



" Eternal process moving on : 

From state to state the spirit walks." 

ORTY years ago, when I was an under- 
graduate at Oxford," said Matthew Arnold, 
" there were voices in the air which haunt 




my memory still. Happy the man who in the suscep- 
tible period of youth hears such voices ! They are a 
possession to him forever." 

In the Boston air for more than the two decades of 
1870-90, there sounded a wonderful voice with its 
thrilling and prophetic message, — the voice of Phillips 
Brooks, who preached his first sermon as the rector 
of Trinity Church on Oct. 31, 1869, and over whose 
lifeless form the funeral rites were read in his beloved 
church on Jan. 26, 1893. Between these dates lies 
the story of the most profound and significant ministry 
of the Nineteenth century. The work of Dr. Brooks as 
the Bishop of Massachusetts covered but fifteen months ; 
his ministry as rector of Trinity Church Avas but little 
more than two decades, and the eleven years of his 
previous ministerial service in Philadelphia must be 
viewed largely as a preparatory period ; yet out of this 
comparatively brief time of work, his sudden death 



326 BOSTON DAYS 



on the morning of Jan. 23, 1893, stirred and thrilled 
Boston and the entire commonwealth as no event 
had done before since the death of Daniel Webster, 
and it will easily be realized how much less of both 
city and State there was to be thrilled and stirred in 
1852 than in 1893. Not alone, either, to city or State, 
or even to New England, was the phenomenal out- 
pouring of sorrow limited. From Boston to Calcutta, 
from San Francisco to London, from Chicago to Paris, 
one cry of lament arose. The daily press, never too 
largely given over to spiritual contemplation, declared, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Northern 
pine to the Southern palm, that the death of Bishop 
Brooks was a national calamity. 

Well may one pause and question as to what element 
or characteristic in the personality of Phillips Brooks 
thus touched "the electric chain with which we are 
darkly bound " in so unprecedented a manner ? 

The Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks, S.T.D., LL.D., late 
Bishop of Massachusetts, was a cultivated and scholarly 
and courteous gentleman ; but there is nothing re- 
markably distinctive in that characterization. All 
around him were other men equally or even more 
scholarly, perhaps of more extended culture and of far 
greater experience were experience to be measured by 
duration of time, although its true measurement is 
rather by depth than length of life. In his exquisite 
courtesy — in a manner that a prince might have en- 
vied — no one could surpass him ; but in the polished 
circles of Boston and Cambridge it would go hard to 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 327 

affirm that even in this exquisite courtesy he was un- 
rivalled. Side by side with him stood a group of sin- 
gularly exalted and remarkable men, of whom the 
venerable Rev. Dr. Andrew P. Peabody, Rev, Dr. 
Edward Everett Hale, Rev. George A. Gordon, Rev. 
Dr. Philip Moxom, Rev. Minot Judson Savage, James 
Freeman Clarke (and, after Dr. Clarke's death, his no 
less remarkable successor, Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon 
Ames, one of the most exalted and spiritual of men), — 
these names and others of fame and greatness will 
readily recur to all as men who brought to mankind 
messages that are advancing the entire general life to a 
higher plane. Their work is so marked a feature of the 
time that, even though we may regard special prophecies 
as vain and idle, it cannot be denied that certain ten- 
dencies belong to this period which may well arrest 
attention and denote that the world is coming to Christ 
— that He through spiritual agencies is again coming 
to the world — in a manner not less real because not 
characterized by outward sign or phenomenon. No con- 
templation of Bishop Brooks could approach complete- 
ness without the largest recognition of the rich atmos- 
phere and remarkable contemporary associations amid 
which he was so exalted a figure. 

The quality which defined his life and work so dis- 
tinctively was his power of relating the divinest thought 
to the ordinary occurrences of life ; of investing them 
with spiritual significance. He contemplated reli- 
gion, — not so much as an ornament to life as com- 
pletely identified with life itself. He believed the 



328 BOSTON DAYS 



redeemed life — that which has caught the vision and 
the glory — to be the only life, and only in the degree 
to which man lives the life of the spirit, does he live 
at all. " This is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even your faith," he would quote, and add that only by 
belief in something higher could man master the lower. 
" Oh, the necessity of loving purity and great thoughts 
about great themes," he would say, — " not merely being 
driven to them." His gospel was essentially that of 
achieving the life more abundant. While he loved 
nature, he preferred town to country because there 
centre the interests of human life. His biographer, 
Rev. Dr. Alexander V. G. Allen, relates that once when 
Dr. Brooks was calling on a friend at the Hotel Bruns- 
wick some one spoke of the beauties of nature, and that 
Dr. Brooks rose, looked out of the window over the 
wide view of homes and church spires and towers, and 
said, " Oh, no ! not nature, but this beautiful view. 
Give me this, for it stands for life, for humanity, 
and that is what attracts me and makes life worth the 
living." 

He saw Christ as the divine illustration of human 
perfection ; the revelation in himself of the highest 
ideal possibilities. We find him saying : " Through the 
divine humanity of Jesus, God was manifest in the flesli, 
and therefore all that Jesus taught and ever teaclies, 
whether by word or action, is the consummation and 
fulfilment of that presentation of Himself which God is 
ever making througli humanity to man. And the great 
teachers of religion who have done the most Christ-like 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 329 

work have always been those whose personality has 
been most complete, and who have been in truest human 
relation to the souls they taught." 

This theory of Dr. Brooks was realized in a remarkable 
degree in his own life. He was in the widest related- 
ness to humanity. Whether it was preaching before 
the Queen by the special invitation of her Majesty in 
the Chapel Royal at Windsor Castle, or caring for the 
infant child of a poor colored woman that she might go 
out in the open air, his personal sympathy went out in 
the most vital and — reverently let it be said — in the 
most Christ-like way, to man or woman who needed 
his thought or aid, at the moment. This was the 
secret regarding the remarkable impress made upon life 
by Phillips Brooks, — a secret eluding the mind but 
haunting the heart ; the secret that defies intellectual 
analysis but reveals itself to the intuition. He was not 
only " the friend and aider of those who would live in 
the Spirit," — he was the friend and aider to discover 
to itself the imprisoned spirit, and reveal to it gleams 
of light and sweetness heretofore undreamed of, and 
communicate to it, through the magnetism of sympathy, 
new vitality and hope. His magical power over men 
lay in appeal to tlie higher self, the better self, of each 
individual. He did not conceive of Christians and 
men ; but he said, virtually : The only real manhood, 
the only genuine womanhood, is Christian manhood 
or womanhood. To be a Christian is not an abnormal, 
but the normal state. It is simply the human being 
entering into his heritage. You are a child of God. 



330 BOSTON DAYS 



Claim your birthright. He took the eternal truths 
of the gospel of Jesus and put them into modern 
circulation. 

It was sometimes questioned as to the consistency of 
such a minister in remaining the rector of what it 
pleased many people to call a " rich and fashionable 
church." Jesus said leave all, — all, not a part, — and 
follow me, the questioner would say, adding, " But 
Dr. Brooks lives in and amid luxury. He preaches to 
rich people. Is that the highest Christianity ? " 

Now if any enterprising sociologist has yet discovered 
that rich people do not possess souls, or that their souls 
are not worth saving, there might be a modicum of 
force in this arraignment. But at all events, Phillips 
Brooks* charity was wide enough to include in his love 
and care even the millionaires. For he saw in this field 
a remarkable opportunity. When he was called, in 
1869, from Philadelphia, to be the rector of Trinity 
Church, he came to a peculiar field of labor. He was 
then thirty-four years of age. He was Boston born 
and bred and educated. He was well descended, Rev. 
John Cotton being among his paternal ancestors, while 
his mother was a Phillips, of the noted family who 
founded the two Phillips Academies, — at Andover and 
Exeter. He graduated from the Boston Latin School 
at sixteen ; from Harvard at twenty, in the class of '55, 
which included Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. , 
Robert Treat Paine, and Frank B. Sanborn, the eminent 
social scientist ; he had studied theology at Alexandria, 
Va., where his classmate and nearest friend was Henry 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 331 

C. Potter, now the distinguished Bishop of New York ; 
he had taken holy orders at twenty-four and had gone 
as assistant minister to his beloved and revered friend 
and former pastor, Rev. Dr. Vinton, in the Church of 
the Advent, Philadelphia, from which later, he accepted 
a call to be the rector of Holy Trinity in that city ; all 
these activities had occupied his time up to that memo- 
rable December of 1869, when he entered on what was 
to prove the real work of his life, — the rectorship of 
Trinity Church, Boston. He came to a most unique 
and remarkable field. The congregation of Trinity was 
composed of people of fastidious culture and critical 
demands ; and tiiey held, perhaps, largely, the general 
conception of the day, that the Christian life was to 
observe with due decorum the ritual of the church, to 
give aid in food, or clothing, or money to " the poor ; " 
but to give close personal sympathy, to give themselves, 
was undreamed of, — in a word, the churches of the day 
were largely composed of people who, after the witti- 
cism of Mr. Howells, " hoped that their souls were im- 
mortal, but hieiv that they were cultivated ! " Of course 
this must not be taken too literally, nor, indeed, to re- 
flect in any way upon the individuals of Trinity Church. 
But the prevailing ideals of that time were after this 
order. People were to be moral, kind, and observe the 
church calendar. The poor were to be fed ; the sick 
were to be nursed ; but that any actual personal sym- 
pathy could exist between the carers and the cared for, 
save that of kind condescension on the one hand and 
meek gratitude on the other, had less generally dawned 



332 BOSTON DAYS 



upon the public mind than at the present time, and had 
not entered so closely into the public heart. 

The young rector had the especial qualifications as a 
missionary to the rich and the cultivated. He was well 
born (was he not Boston born ? what would you more ?), 
he was well-bred ; he was in touch with polite society 
and elegant culture. He was eloquent ; he had even 
then begun to be famous, and he reflected credit upon 
the fastidious taste of Trinity parish. The young rector 
was all these, — but he was a great deal beside. He 
had a heart, and a great one. He had sympathies, he 
had certain very noble ideals, but even all these were, 
at that period of his life, somewhat nebulous in com- 
parison with the marvellous richness of his spiritual life 
in later years. Yet one element of his nature was in 
bold relief always, — his absolute sincerity. That is the 
foundation on which his great character was based. 

It would not have been too difficult for a young 
minister in his place to have become the fashionable 
clergyman of a fashionable church. But there was in 
Phillips Brooks that stuff which scorned any approach 
to being " the idle singer of an empty day." He im- 
mediately began to exert a direct and positive influence 
upon his hearers, and to achieve, on his own side, 
higher spirituality. 

If we may hope to surprise the secret of the remark- 
able power of Dr. Brooks, is it not that by some 
magic of spiritual alchemy he was able to create a 
magnetic union between the inner and the outer 
worlds, in which invisible realm lies the germ of all 



DAWN OF THE TWEXTIETH CENTURY 333 

great deeds ? To enter into this magnetic union ; to 
come into the conditions of swift receptivity to its 
forces and to a knowledge of its laws is to achieve 
the true secret of life. 

For were iiunianity to adjust itself in perfect har- 
mony with the spiritual laws, it would be able to 
command the powers of earth and air. Right purpose 
is power ; and so, in the depressed periods of dark 
days one has but to cling unfalteringly to a pure purpose 
and demand his union with the divine energy. The 
most intense spiritual potencies may be generated 
during such seasons. " He restoreth the soul." The 
soul has lapsed into doubt, depression, into the nega- 
tive region. God restoreth it. 

Never were the preaching and the personality of a 
minister more widely discussed than were those of 
Phillips Brooks. His was one of those many-faceted 
personalities that flash a new and a different angle of 
vision to every onlooker. He was inscrutable in his 
nature ; not con intentione, but inevitably. More- 
over, he was full of surprises, for he was very human, 
as well as very full of the di\'ine uplifting, and he was 
at all times and under all circumstances singularly 
impressive, however unconsciously so. 

His work was so endowed with \'itality that its 
growth was its perpetual change, — not by revolutionary 
epochs but by evolutionary advancement. By all these 
spiritual epochs in the life of Phillips Brooks the 
contemporary world was profoundly moved. With the 
appearance of the greatest simplicity, his character was 



334> BOSTON DAYS 



really one of the greatest complexity. The key to 
much that Dr. Brooks would do, at any one time, 
would be found in some future — perhaps far future — 
time. This fact suggests one profound truth of human 
life. Just in proportion to its spiritual development, 
life is twofold. And it is not only that one phase of 
it is lived constantly on the plane of the spiritual and 
in contact with unseen forces and unseen companion- 
ships ; but, what adds to the complexity of this most 
curious and often most baffling problem of life is, that 
the life in the unseen and in the seen are not con- 
temporaneous, but that the one precedes the other, 
and determines and constrains the individual often to 
do that which, at the moment, he himself knows not 
why he does ; the action, while perfectly conscious, yet 
being, at the moment, almost automatic. 

There were two qualities of almost equal potency in 
the character of Dr. Brooks, — patriotism and piety. 
The latter, it might be thought, would go without 
saying regarding a man in his sacred office, yet the 
piety of Phillips Brooks was so entirely the life of the 
spirit lived out in practical every-day affairs that it had 
little in common with that more formal religion — 

"... scrimped and iced, 
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ." 

It was the piety that said : " Come, live in the spirit. 
That is the only life. Not a life of sacrifice and sad- 
ness and seclusion, but the life of all fulness of purpose, 
all greatness of achievement, all gladness and joy. Do 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 335 

not forsake your business, your profession, but be by 
so much more the better merchant, engineer, lawyer. 
Christian manhood is only manhood developed to its 
utmost capacity. Manhood has not attained its normal 
possibilities until it is Christian manhood." This was 
the same spirit with which Phillips Brooks galvanized 
into living power truths too often held as abstract as a 
proposition of Euclid. 

The life of Phillips Brooks fell naturally into three 
periods, — that of preparation, that of the rector of a 
great and notable parish, and that of the Episcopate. 
In each of these periods we see those two determining 
qualities, patriotism and piety, alike pre-eminent. 

As rector, the work of Phillips Brooks was never 
bounded by the limits of Trinity parish. His church, 
the community, and the general progress of the day are 
the threefold points from which his work must be 
estimated. Nor can the ministry of this great preacher 
be exclusively claimed even by the Episcopal Church. 
His work was in those deeper regions of life and 
thought where varying opinions find a common basis 
of truth and rest on the universal. The catholicity of 
Phillips Brooks was a positive force which impressed 
itself marvellously upon the age. 

When he entered upon the pastorate of Trinity 
Church, he found his field to lie in one of the most 
conservative and intensely aristocratic parishes of 
America. He resolved that, although by the parish 
laws the church must still be one of rented pews 
rather than free, it must still rise to the true spirit of 



336 BOSTON DAYS 



Christian courtesy and hospitality. Nor were his 
efforts in vain, for Trinity became noted for its marked 
courtesy and generous hospitality, — a hospitality, in- 
deed, that so overflowed all considerations of the right 
of possession that it came to be laughingly remarked 
that the unfortunate pew-owners seemed to be the only 
persons who could not be accommodated in the church, 
and who had no rights that the public were bound to 
respect. By the rector's desire a row of chairs was 
placed around the chancel, and several long seats 
added in rows on either side, all free to the occupants, 
" and as many as can come and sit in my pulpit with 
me are welcome," characteristically asserted the rector. 
It came, indeed, to be a great problem at Trinity as to 
the possible accommodation of the throngs that crowded 
the church — aisles and corridors and the very steps of 
the altar — to hear Phillips Brooks. A large propor- 
tion of these would gladly have purchased seats could 
they have been obtained, and there was, on the part 
of many, great hesitation about crowding into a 
church where they must, perforce, depend upon hos- 
pitality or chance for seats. But whenever Phillips 
Brooks was to be heard, the people must go. Whether 
in the luxurious and beautiful interior of Trinity, or in 
the bare, if venerable and historic, precincts of Faneuil 
Hall, or a south end " opera " house, — it mattered 
little. The large proportion of women over men, which 
is a feature of Boston, obliged the great preacher to 
exclude them entirely when he gave courses of Lenten 
lectures to business men, or the women would have 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 337 

entirely pre-empted the church. The Boston woman 
usually asserts her " rights," to say nothing of her 
privileges; but on these memorable occasions she was 
remanded to feminine seclusion. 

Perhaps no man has ever more truly and faithfully 
fulfilled the duty of speaking the truth in love than 
Phillips Brooks. In a remarkable degree he combined 
the widest and tenderest charity towards human nature, 
and a power of holding before it the divine ideal by 
which its conduct must be measured. The true realism 
of life, he would say, is not that base realism which 
only records the failures and limitations of man, but 
that which also takes into account his higher possibil- 
ities. A man's life is committed to the world, and here 
two intensely vital things come together. " It is the 
meeting of these two intensely living things," Dr. 
Brooks would say, "this meeting of the universe of 
facts and truths and of this living nature of man, with 
his conscience and intellect, that makes the complica- 
tions of life, and it is out of these, too, that the dangers 
of life must proceed." The lessons that he presented 
in this remarkable discourse were, first, that " there is 
no condition in this world, no matter what privileges 
and safeguards are thrown around it, that can liberate 
a man from the constant watching of his own integrity 
and the truthfulness of his soul." And, again, he 
taught that the man who knows the danger by which 
he is surrounded must be filled of tenderest charity, of 
deep consideration, and of the largest possible indul- 
gence for the nature of those who, surrounded by the 

22 



338 BOSTON DAYS 



same danger, have fallen into the depths from which he 
happily has saved himself. 

Dr. Brooks was eminently social in his nature. He 
had a fund of humor which reveals itself in his letters, 
of which a volume has been published, and he was 
swift in epigram and repartee. He was the most ac- 
cessible of men. After he became bishop, his private 
secretary, the Rev. Dr. William Henry Brooks (who, 
though bearing the same name, was not related to 
him), suggested that he must have office hours, in order 
to secure any time for himself. He replied that a 
clergyman or layman " when leaving his business to 
consult with me, not knowing of the observance of 
office hours (should there be such), might find his time 
wasted, and be disappointed of the desired interview. 
No, I am not willing to have office hours. If people 
wish to see me, I ought to and will see them,'' he 
concluded. 

Dr. William Henry Brooks notes that " on another 
occasion, when some one spoke to him of the great con- 
sumption of his time in receiving the almost number- 
less calls of persons who desired his counsel and 
assistance, and the wear and tear of his strength which 
must follow in consequence, he replied with great 
emphasis, 'God save the day when they won't come 
to me.'" 

In February of 1891, Bishop Paddock of Massachu- 
setts died, and the clamor which arose that he should 
be succeeded by Dr. Brooks has not yet faded from 
the public memory. At the diocesan convention in the 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 339 

following May he was elected by so large a majority 
that it was made unanimous ; during the ensuing 
summer the choice was contirmed by the House of 
Bishops, and on Oct. 14, 1891, Dr. Brooks was con- 
secrated bishop in Trinity Church, in all the splendor 
of that elaborate and brilliant ceremonial. 

When the rector of Trinity became the bishop of the 
diocese, the only change was seen in the constant 
deepening and broadening of his consecrated power. 
His eloquence, his fervor, his profound spirituality, 
were conjoined with the same simplicity of manner, 
directness of purpose, zeal for humanity, and love for 
his country, that always made his teaching so im- 
pressive. He kept his faith in the divine element in 
man. He could arouse and inspire because he brought 
to bear that eternal force of positive affirmation. It 
is the force to which humanity responds. " It is the 
belief in the redeemable qualities of man which is the 
most potent spell in the University of Christ," said 
Bishop Potter in his personal address to Dr. Brooks on 
the occasion of his consecration as bishop, ''and," 
added Bishop Potter, "as it seems to me, you have 
never lost it out of yours." 

In his work as bishop. Dr. Brooks was ftiithful, 
earnest, and thorough, rather, perhaps, than methodical. 
He was very careful in keeping appointments, and 
absolutely sincere in his expression. The response " I 
will do it if I can," from Bishop Brooks, did not mean 
" I will do it if, at the time, I feel inclined," but con- 
veyed the literal significance of the words. He was 



340 BOSTON DAYS 



too imaginative, too spontaneous a man to be given 
over wholly to routine, and lie was apt to write his 
sermons when the spell came upon him, rather than in 
any specific hours. The morning was usually his best 
time to Avrite, — the time when he felt his thought the 
clearest and deepest. 

Before entering on the duties of the Episcopate he 
attended personally to his large correspondence. Every 
letter, note, or request, no matter how ill-timed it might 
be, received its adequate reply in his clear, concise chi- 
rography, characterized by his marked courtesy. It is 
a study in human nature to know some of the extraor- 
dinary things on which Bishop Brooks was consulted. 
A woman in Minnesota who wanted a pension, a man 
in India who desired some information regarding a 
registry in a church in Montreal, are but specimens of 
the requests, foreign to his province, that rained down 
upon him. " So far as is possible," remarked the 
bishop's secretary, '' Dr. Brooks fulfils all the things 
asked of him. We spent a good deal of time to get the 
registry matter at Montreal traced up, and multitudes 
of things that a man less busy — less great — than the 
bishop would refuse or ignore, he gives attention to. 
It is all the work of humanity." 

His personal service was as untiring as his courtesy 
was infinite. At one time a poor clergyman from 
abroad was in Boston and, beside his limited resoiu'ces, 
he was also in ill health. Bishop Brooks entertained 
him in his own home, went with him to New York, and 
saw him safely aboard the steamer, and this to a stran- 




-5^ 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 341 

ger who had no claim on him, as many would have said, 
and was not even of his own denomination. Bishop 
Brooks lived that brotherhood of man that the most 
advanced thought of to-day holds as its ideal. 

To the Episcopate of Massachusetts Bishop Brooks 
brought such spiritual vitality as to regenerate and re- 
create it. He was always joyful in his work. His 
meat was to do the will of Him who sent him. He 
rejoiced in the inestimable privilege of bringing sym- 
pathy and uplifting and a larger sense of duty to man. 
His messages were delivered with a magnetism and a 
force that proved them heaven sent. His personal holi- 
ness of character was felt in all the community and it 
served as an object lesson to teach that the Redeemer 
liveth — liveth as an ever-present force in the affairs 
and the purposes of life. The teaching of Phillips 
Brooks was one full of hope and spiritual energy be- 
cause, while recognizing the sinfulness of sin, he saw 
always the divine possibilities in humanity and God's 
purpose in its development. " Never be afraid," he 
would say, "to bring the sublimest ideal to the most 
insignificant act." 

While Trinity parish was the beloved centre of the 
work of Dr. Brooks, it radiated over the entire city. 
It was so vital, so pervasive, it so diffused itself like the 
sunlight, it touched life at so many points, and every- 
body's life at some point, that it is no exaggeration to 
say that his sudden death left Boston empty and dark 
without his presence. Every one felt that he had lost 
a personal friend. " Those who trust us educate us," 



S42 BOSTON DAYS 



said George Eliot. Phillips Brooks trusted humanity. 
He believed in it ; and because he appealed to that 
which is best and noblest in every man, he never 
appealed in vain. 

Press and pulpit poured out their utterances over the 
uplifting example of Phillips Brooks. The best ethical 
thought of the day was inspired by his life and work ; 
and of all there was perhaps no expression more price- 
less than that in the sermon preached on Bishop Brooks 
by the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames, in the Church 
of the Disciples, who, in this memorable discourse, 
said : — 

"The best is yet to come. All that Bishop Brooks 
has done for good during his thirty-four years of public 
service is small compared with the cumulative effect and 
growing outcome of his word and his life. The spiritual 
power which he received from a hidden source he has 
transmitted to the world ; and that power is here to stay. 
It is to be a permanent and continuous working force in 
human hearts and in human affairs. Every man's influ- 
ence is just like himself, and it flows on like a widening 
stream, mingling with other influences, and modified in its 
effects by time and circumstances, yet ever holding the 
same general direction and working to the same general 
result." 

Bishop Brooks was no mystic or visionary by nature. 
He had far less of that tendency to see visions and to 
dream dreams than might have naturally been looked 
for in one whose life was consecrated to spiritual pur- 
suits. Yet he was an omnivorous reader of occult and 
mystic lore, and the mysticism of Emerson had no more 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 343 

appreciative devotee than himself. Dr. Allen records 
that in his college days Dr. Brooks was deeply interested 
in the Sibylline Oracles, and that he " became fascinated 
by that moment in ancient history when Alexandria led 
the world of thought." This tendency to mystic thought 
was developed in Dr. Brooks to the higher expression 
of that spirituality which relates itself to practical life 
in guiding and controlling its issues. There is every 
reason that the name of Phillips Brooks should be 
invested with moral magic, as it stands pre-eminently 
for the practical power of ideal purposes. 

Spiritual force is the supreme potency, — a force as 
much greater than electricity in its creative power as 
electricity is more potent than the dullest clod, — and 
out of the life of Bishop Brooks was struck the electric 
spark that lighted a thousand watchfires. 

"When in human experience the psychic life is 
wholly given up to its supreme office of suggestion and 
radiation," says Professor John H. Denison in his very 
remarkable work on " Christ's Idea of the Supernatural," 
" it not only feeds the spirit with visions, but, exalted 
in turn by the spirit and surcharged with spirit force, it 
acts upon matter in a direct, causative way ; it radiates 
the creative causative spirit." All the great work of 
humanity is an example of this truth, that spiritual 
energy creates its visible expressions. The entire envi- 
ronment of the universe is calculated in unerring cor- 
respondence with moral perfection. To the degree in 
which this truth is realized, life is successful and happy ; 
and he who thus lives is upborne by invincible powers. 



3i\- BOSTON DAYS 



The stars in their courses fight for him. Tlie winds are 
his messengers, and the clouds his chariot. To the 
degree in whicli he falls below the moral standard, he 
encounters friction and trial. We talk of this life and 
the next, but tlicre is only one life; and, as Bishop 
Brooks once said, " Death is not the end of life, but an 
event in life." 

Spirituality of life is a condition, not a creed ; a ser- 
vice, and not a spectacle ; a life and not a litany. The 
great problem of life to all is : How shall one grow in 
sympathy, and tenderness, in generosity, and in consider- 
ation ? How shall one feed on high thought and noble 
aims? How shall one be swift to discern and to avail 
himself of those opportunities for usefulness to others 
which are the best channels of his own growth ? How 
shall one hold clear and close relation with the divine 
energy ? 

" Be one of the conquerors ! " said Balzac. " The uni- 
verse belongs to him who wills and loves and prays ; 
but he must will, he must love, he must pray — in a 
word, he must possess wisdom, force, and faith ! " 

All phases of progress — art, painting, sculpture, 
architecture, and poetry, tiie mysticism of Emerson, the 
speculation of to-day — had no more sympathetic sharer 
than Phillips Brooks. His attitude toward all modern 
phenomena was respectful in its questioning and in its 
readiness to accept any real genuine aid. He saw that 
the dominant note of the age was touched in its search 
for spiritual truth. " Learning may have its traditional 
dangers," he would say, " but their cure lies not in 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 345 

ignorance ; life itself has its dangers, but their cure lies 
not in suicide." 

Dr. Brooks had served in his office as bisliop of the 
diocese but fifteen months wlien he was called to the 
Unseen World. On the day of the burial (Jan. 20, 
1893) the people were astir from six in the morning 
until the shadows of the early winter twilight fell over 
the lily-laden mound in Mount Auburn where all that 
was mortal of the dead prelate was reverently laid. 
During the ceremonies at the church business was sus- 
pended, stores and offices generally closed, and the busy 
streets bore a deserted look. 

Within Trinity the services were as beautiful as they 
were simple. The chancel was a dream of Paradise in 
its great cross of Annunciation lilies against a full back- 
ground of palms and greenery. The masses of flowers, — 
lilies, roses, and one wreatii of scarlet carnations (for 
the Harvard colors, the crimson), included a book of 
white rose-buds with " The Light of the World " writ- 
ten across in purple immortelles. The casket, covered 
with lilies and palm branches tied with royal purple, 
was borne by eight Harvard men, — young athletes 
chosen for the sacred honor. It was followed by the 
honorary pall-bearers from among the most distin- 
guished men of Boston. The long procession of sur- 
pliccd priests, comprising all the clergy of the diocese 
and visiting clergy, marched through the cloisters and 
down the broad aisle to the chancel, while within the 
altar waited a group of bishops, and the scene strangely 
like that of the consecration of Dr. Brooks as 



K) BOSTON DAYS 



bisliop, liftcen months before. During this service 
nuMuoriul services were also iield in a neighboring 
Baptist church by its pastor, the Uev. Dr. Philip Moxoni, 
and in the new " Old South " Congregational (.luirch 
by the Rev. George A. Gordon. All tlistinctions of 
creed and sect were obliterated, and " Our Bishop " 
was the expression on the lips of those of all denomi- 
nations and of those of no denomination at all. 

'Vhc last service seemed to be a sacred festival of life 
rather than lamentation for death. As the casket under 
its royal purple pall laden with lilies and palms was 
borne from Trinity on the shoulders of the young 
Harvard men, the sun suddenly shone out from the 
clouds of a gray day, lighting up the pictured windows 
in radiant glory, while the triumphal nmsic of the 
immortal hynm filled the air : — 

" For all Tliy saints that in Thy glory rost." 

Outside in Copley Square thirty thousand people 
waited for hours and reverently united in repeating the 
Lord's Prayer. Thirty thousand voices joineil in 
singing : — 

" O God, ouv lu'lp in ages past, 
Our hope in years to oonio " 

Amid the great assend)lage there was a general 
recognition of the truth so forcibly expressed by the 
beloved bishop that 

" Heath is not the tiid of life but an event ;'/( life." 

The funeral cortc'gc to ]\b>unt Auburn mimbered six 
hundred carriages, and on its way nnide a dt5tour 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY .S47 

through the groiiii(l.s of Jfurvard, wliero two tliouHand 
undorgraduatcH stood on either .side with bared and 
b(jwed heads as the long procession passed. 

Wiien Dr. IJrooks resigned Iiis reetorship to aeccpt 
the work of the l^jpiseopute, Trinity CJmreh invited the 
Itev. Dr. I*]. Winchester IJonahl, of New York, to be- 
come his successor. Dr. Donald's ministry has been of 
a noble order, and one phase of his thought has found 
literary expression in a book called " The l']xpansion 
of Religion," — a collection of the notable lectures 
which he delivered before the liowell Institute. The 
succession of Dr. Donald to the rectorship has been 
rendered the more tender in ties between people and 
pastor in that Dr. Donald was the beloved friend of 
Dr. Brooks, who earnestly hoped he would accept the 
invitation to Trinity. Fortunate, indeed, is the church 
in securing the noble ministry of its present rector, so 
splendidly endowed, not only with learning, culture, 
and profound intellectual genius, but also with those 
still rarer (puilities of insight, syni[)athy, and vision. 

In his commemorative address on Jiishop Jirooks, Dr. 
Donald thus finely presented the results of the great 
work of his predecessor : — 

"Phillips Brooks opened the doors of tlie Episcopal 
Church to thousands who had long and honestly regarded 
her as too stiff and formal and foreign an ecclcsiastieism 
for a genuinely alert, spiritual nature to live in. The 
years, as they go by, only reveal more clearly how great 
were his services to our church, simply as an ecclesiastic. 
He made the Church American in her essential eharac- 



348 BOSTON DAYS 



ter, and stripped off the last remaining semblance of 
an exotic. It will never be thought wonderful that 
his spirit lives in Trinity Church, and it would be a 
reversal of all spiritual history if the grave in Mount 
Auburn treasured all of him that was ever vital. No ! 
His great example still stimulates emulation, his faith 
in Christ as his Saviour — the only faith once for all 
delivered to the saints — has been transmitted, and we 
find it easier to believe because he once lived." 

The life of the great and beloved bishop stood con- 
spicuously for the great truth, — that the life of the 
spirit is the only life worth living ; that it may be as 
truly lived in the midst of tlie restless activities of the 
day, in the busy haunts of men, as in a monk's cell,^or 
on the lonely heights of Mt. Carmel. Furthermore, the 
life of Phillips Brooks is an unanswerable testimony 
that this life of the spirit may be so lived as to be in 
touch with the world's activities, to be in familiar and 
friendly relations with men of business and affairs, and 
to maintain mutual respect. His life speaks with a 
thousand tongues to tell us the more spiritually ideal 
life is, the more truly practical and helpful it may be. 

An interesting feature in the Boston life of the last 
decades of the Nineteenth century was the organization 
of the " Society to Encourage Study at Home," founded 
by Anna Eliot Ticknor, the daughter of George Ticknor, 
the Spanish professor at Harvard and the author of a 
history of Spanish literature. In 1830 Professor Ticknor 
bought the house at the corner of Beacon and Park 
streets, which already had a history, one association of 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 349 

it being that it was the house where Lafayette was 
entertained during his visit to Boston. Here Professor 
Ticknor lived until his death, in 1871. The march of 
trade pre-empted the house and forced his daughter to 
transfer her household gods to a new home on Marl- 
borough Street. The life in the Ticknor home was 
that of literary and social prominence. The narratives 
that come down of that leisurely life of the first half 
of the century in Boston reveal its forcible contrast 
with tlie rush of the present. These were the years 
when people still held to somewhat primitive customs ; 
when there was leisure for culture and for the real 
companionship which " society " does not always 
supply. The art of conversation flourished — one 
which is not invariably among the fine arts of the pres- 
ent. New books were events, and were mucli talked 
over. In this atmosphere of leisurely thought Miss 
Ticknor grew up and to her exquisite literary culture 
she added something of the passion of the philanthro- 
pist. " The Society for the Encouragement of Study at 
Home " was founded in June of 1873. Its nature can 
best be described as an ideal university, one having 
no material form, no visible expression, no location, no 
codes or restrictions. Virtually, it said to every person 
who wished to study and improve : " Begin ; I will 
loan books to you ; I will correspond with you ; I will 
teach you all that may be taught by letters." 

Here was a gentlewoman of the highest social recog- 
nition, a woman of large wealth, of liberal tastes and of 
leisure, who wished to contribute her share of aid to the 



350 BOSTON DAYS 



world. Far better than to merely give inouey, she gave 
her thought, her time, her culture. No conceivable 
amount of checks donated to organized charities could 
begin to equal the good that Miss Ticknor did through 
this extended reaching out to whomsoever desired to 
enjoy these privileges. The plan, too, was self-limiting, 
self-distributive. It did not offer benefits where they 
were not appreciated. It gave to all who responded. 
It was offered freely like the kingdom of heaven, and it 
is a question if ever there were a more heavenly benefi- 
cence. With the death of Miss Ticknor, the society 
ceased to exist and its collection of books was presented 
to the Public Library. 

The literary fame inseparable from the name of Ticknor 
is pleasantly continued by a young and gifted writer, 
Caroline Ticknor, the granddaughter of the noted pub- 
lisher. Miss Ticknor's stories abound in humor and are 
full of a sunshiny charm that fascinates every reader. 

One of the great works done during the last quar- 
ter of the Nineteenth century in higher education for 
women, was that of Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, the wife of 
the great naturalist. Mrs. Agassiz has always been so 
deeply occupied in the essentials of the work itself that 
she has not encouraged any public comment ; but it is 
to her that Radclifte College practically owes its exist- 
ence. There was organized in Boston and Cambridge, 
in the seventies, a society for the collegiate instruction 
of women, of which Mrs. Agassiz was the president. 
It was this society that prevailed upon Harvard profes- 
sors to give instruction to women students, and thus 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 351 

led to the establishment of what was so long known as 
the Harvard "Annex." Step by step the innovation 
went forward. It gained by excellence and not by 
exhortation. Finally, in 1894, a charter was obtained, 
and the " Annex " became a woman's college, — Mrs. 
Agassiz, President Eliot, Prof. Chas. Eliot Norton, Pro- 
fessor Goodwin, Professor Childs, and others leading the 
movement. Many thought at the time that it should 
bear the name of Agassiz College. Mrs. Agassiz pre- 
ferred the present uame, which was suggested in a 
curious way. Anne Radcliffe, of England, — afterward 
Lady Moulson, — had given to Harvard the first scholar- 
ship the college had ever received from a woman. The 
fact came to light accidentally (only that such accidents 
are doubtless due to direction and not to chance) 
in papers that disclosed the fact to a student who 
was searching in the library for something quite 
different. 

Radcliffe will become to women what Johns Hopkins 
is to men, — a special place for post-graduate work, with 
every facility for the most advanced research into astron- 
omy, physics, art, literature, and languages. Radcliffe 
will, in time, and in no very distant future, inaugurate a 
new standard of culture for American women, one whose 
influence will be national and all-pervading. 

The companionship and influence of such a woman as 
Mrs. Agassiz is of inestimable advantage to the students 
of Radcliffe, and indeed the finer forces and finer influ- 
ences everywhere prevail. The culture is symmetrical, 
and not the least of the advantages of this college is the 



352 BOSTON DAYS 



habit of good society which the young womeu acquire 
from the prevailing associations. 

Boston, like Paris, has her Quartier Latin, where 
the most interesting things happen. There is a semi- 
Bohemian region in which are located several studio 
buildings and other artistic or semi-literary headquarters, 
which is a part of the city that is very much alive. On 
the new land, the buildings all new, it is yet adjacent 
to and adjoining the old part of the city. It is not far 
distant, geographically, from the fashionable portion ; it 
is within a half dozen blocks of Commonwealth Avenue, 
of Beacon Street ; but while these thoroughfares are 
monotonously quiet, with the decorous rows of private 
residences, broken now and then by an apartment hotel 
that vies with palaces in luxurious fitting-up, this 
artistic Latin-like quarter abounds in students who 
pour out of its clubrooms or restaurants in great 
numbers ; with artists, men and women, who perhaps 
live in their studios, make their matutinal coffee over 
a gas stove, and dine at a restaurant; it abounds in 
lecturers ; in the followers and practitioners of occult 
science and mental healing ; in spiritual mediums — 
what you will. You will perhaps be accosted on the 
sidewalk by a neatly dressed woman with refined 
courtesy of manner, who offers you a card bearing the 
legend, " Divine Science Home." You may be favored 
with a gratuitous copy of " The Prophetic Star-gazer ; " 
you may be gently entreated to attend a lecture on the 
" Science of Creation from the Standpoint of Vibration ; " 
or invited to a course on " Psycho-Physics ; " you may 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 353 

be asked if you understand " mental chemistry ; " you 
may be invited to the home of " Rest, Recuperation, 
and Regeneration ; " you may be informed of the 
private lectures given by Siddi Mohammed Tabier ; 
you may be privileged to enter into the mystic atmos- 
phere of the " Oriental Circle," where you listen to 
discourses on the "Gods of Egypt and the Book of 
the Dead," " The Mahabharata and the Ramayana," 
or the " Reincarnation of the Vedas." Lecturers in this 
region discuss such topics as " Primal Force," " The 
Bondage of Mortal Sense," and " The Elimination of 
Death. " A daintily gowned young woman sitting in a 
club parlor in this region was asked if she believed in 
thought-transference. " Oh, I am far beyond that," she 
replied airily ; " I am in the sphere of intense vibrations." 
There is one house where its fair mistress proclaims 
herself a " Daughter of the Druids," and where she 
gathers a circle of the faithful about her on afternoons 
and lectures to them on "Symbolism." She has a 
room fitted up with maps and charts of the most ex- 
traordinary description, — the signs of the zodiac ; the 
supposed aspect of the universe at different periods of 
creation ; the representation of man in various evolu- 
tionary stages, and other strange figures whose signifi- 
cance eludes the ordinary observer. 

" I feel, indeed, that I am in Boston again," remarked 
a Bostonian who had just returned from a long 
residence abroad. " Think of being stopped on the 
street by an epigram. I met Mr. Alger, and he said 
to me, ' I have an original epigram I will give you : 

23 



354 BOSTON DAYS 



Justice is the highest human virtue ; but disinterested- 
ness is not a virtue, it is the highest delight of a noble 
order of mind.' Now when I am stopped on the street 
by a man who desires to give me an epigram, I know 
that I am in Boston." 

The mere incidental conversation of the moment is 
not unfrequently bewildering to the un-Bostonian mind. 
At the theatre one night, in a pause between two acts, 
the question was asked by a friend : — 

" Do you know So-and-so ? " 

" Only by name," was the reply ; " I have never met 
him." 

" I saw him to-day," he rejoined ; " we chanced to 
meet on Temple Place, and I asked him if he believed 
in the personality of God ? He said he never had, but 
he had thought more about it of late, and I feel that 
he is coming into the higher thought." 

There was nothing unusual about this interlude, and 
one is not at all sure that if he had not been absent 
from Boston for a long time it would even have im- 
pressed itself enough to have been recorded in memory. 
When constantly steeped in Boston life one becomes so 
accustomed to having theological enigmas propounded 
in any chance meeting on the street, or profound prob- 
lems of sociology, art, ethics — as may be — discussed 
on a street car, at a party, or in the interludes of play 
or opera, that one takes it all for granted. At all 
events, Boston is Boston, unique, unparalleled in its 
social flavor. There is a humorous tradition that 
Motley and Mrs. Howe, in the interludes of a waltz, 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 355 

discussed (and very ably) the problem of original sin 
and election, but to what degree this anecdote is 
due to invention rather than fact is open to speculation. 
With better claim to authenticity is the narration that 
Emerson and Margaret Fuller went together to the old 
Boston Museum to see Fanny Elssler dance, and that 
the sibylline Margaret remarked, "Waldo, this is 
poetry ; " to which the seer of Concord solemnly 
rejoined, " Margaret, it is religion," 

There is indeed a keynote to Boston life touched in 
these little anecdotes which illustrates one of the cur- 
rents of speculative thought. " If a Trappist monk 
should come to this city, Boston would utilize him as 
a lion," remarked the poet and novelist, Katherine 
E. Conway, alluding to the momentary enthusiasm 
aroused by Father Ignatius in the garb of a mediaeval 
monk, who added to the ascetic life the zeal of a 
Methodist exhorter, and who, with his closely shaven 
head, his monk robe and knotted cord, his beads and 
crucifix, and sandalled feet, made a striking figure as 
he preached to the crowds that gathered to hear him. 

Boston is the paradise of cranks, albeit there may not 
be wanting among them some of those who are not 
wholly devoid of some device to turn the universe. 
Palmistry, astrology, card-reading, crystal-gazing, and 
every sort and condition of soothsayer receives a greater 
or less degree of patronage, from the fashionable palmist 
at ten dollars for an half hour's consultation, to a 
"South End" card-reader at twenty-five cents an hour. 
At one time " Cheiro " appeared, establishing himself in 



356 BOSTON DAYS 



a suite in the fashionable Hotel Brunswick, where he 
fitted up a room with Egyptian hangings and mystic 
emblems into which all Boston poured, eager to pay its 
ten dollars for twenty minutes with the seer who volun- 
teered to lift the veil from futurity, — while many were 
turned away, daily, forced to await a future appointment ; 
and through all degrees of life, social and financial, the 
interest in the occult is manifested. 

Theosophy was first introduced into Boston by a 
well-known woman of letters and society who, on lier 
return from a period of foreign travel, brought with her 
as her guest for tlie winter Mr. Mohini Mohun Ciiatterji, 
the noted Hindoo. A limited number of invited friends 
met on three evenings a week in her library, to whom 
Mr. Mohini explained the Bhagavad Gita and other 
sacred writers in the Sanscrit. A little later public 
societies were formed for the study of Oriental religion 
and the Tlieosophists became a frankly avowed cult. 
Mrs. Annie Besant arrived from London, inspiring great 
zeal and an increasing following of this trend of specu- 
lation. Meantime, Mr. Sinnett's " Esoteric Buddhism" 
and "The Occult World" appeared, fairly creating a 
furore in the universal greeting and discussion that fol- 
lowed. Mrs. Anna Kingsford's books, "The Perfect 
Way " an<l " Clothed with the Sun," deepened and ex- 
tended the impress made by the sudden awakening to 
Oriental study and speculation. 

Mrs. Besant was the avowed disciple of Madame 
Blavatsky, who, with impartial fervor, was both wor- 
shipped as a prophetess and denounced as an impostor ; 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 357 

yet happy was occult Boston when it crowded a hall to 
listen to Annie Bcsant, arrayed in a flowing white robe 
as unique as that of an Egyptian seeress. Mrs. Besant 
gave courses of lectures on " Theosophy and Christi- 
anity," "Theosophy and Social Problems," and "The- 
osophy and Present Social Conditions." Apart from 
any acceptance of these special doctrines there was always 
a great interest in hearing Mrs. Besant. She is a speaker 
of strong power, intellectual, logical, and with a finely 
trained mind. On other occasions Mrs. Besant fasci- 
nated Boston by describing to her audience their auras 
and their astral bodies, and initiating them into practical 
ways and means of making sublunary excursions into 
the astral world. The subject was apparently invested 
with fascination, and profound attention characterized 
the hearers. 

Another of these festive occasions was a night when 
"Swami Vivakananda" was to hold forth upon the 
Karma Yogi, — a subject that absolutely dominated 
the attention of a certain cult of the Bostonians. 

That night presented a curious scene. The crowds 
of people that had lined the sidewalk hastening to the 
Procopeia Club were greater than its rooms could hold. 
So the Allen Gymnasium across the street was hastily 
engaged, and the people thronged in. The interior was 
unfinished, the roof sloping up with the bare rafters 
and beams ; the walls of boards unplaned and unplas- 
tered, and from the rafters were depended ropes and 
chains and pulleys hastily pulled up above the heads of 
the audience and dangling from the roof. The platform 



358 BOSTON DAYS 



was high, and on it was a primitive desk and one or two 
chairs. The camp-chairs with which the room was 
seated were instantly pre-empted, and the remainder of 
the crowd bestowed itself as best it might, around the 
walls in the spaces left. It overflowed into the corridor 
and sat upon the stairs, the flight being simply packed 
from the lower step to the top, with people who could 
see nothing, but who could, perhaps, if sufficient silence 
prevailed, hear the speaker. For an hour, at least, be- 
fore the meeting was announced to open, the crowd 
swept in, thronging the place to suffbcation. 

All who were at the Chicago Exposition in 1893 
and who attended the Parliament of Religions, will 
recall the Hindoo monk who came as a delegate, Swami 
Vivekananda. He became at once a favorite, socially 
and otherwise, and in the years immediately follow- 
ing he was occupied in giving courses of lectures in 
Chicago, Washington, New York and Boston. In the 
latter city he gave a series of four lectures before the 
Procopeia Club on Bhakti Yoga, Realization, The Ideal 
of a Universal Religion, and Readings from the Sanscrit. 
The eager following which anything occult always finds 
in Boston is edifying. It is, too, one of the signs of the 
times. So much of that present trend of speculative 
inquiry and discussion which is in the air to-day and is 
not infrequently designated as the "new" truth, is 
simply the truth as old as Christianity, as old as the 
Vedas, translated into new terms. The phrase very 
much in use, — " going into the silence," — which repre- 
sents a very real and vital spiritual experience, is, after 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 359 

all, only another term for what the church knows as 
" communion with God." There is no real antagonism 
between the church as it has always existed, — as it 
exists to-day, — and the utmost spirituality of thought 
and inquiry, although it is perhaps true that the new 
terms into which the very teaching of the church has 
been translated do serve to popularize those truths and 
bring them in a more vital way before the people. 
Nothing, however, is more to be deprecated than that 
there should spring up the slightest approach to the 
attitude of considering the church merely as a formal 
institution, and life, in the higher spiritual sense, as 
outside it ; to speak of " outgrowing " the church ! 
Who is there, indeed, who has even grown to the full 
stature, the infinite possibilities offered in any church of 
whatever name, sect, or form ? If all this larger interest 
which includes much genuine and vital thought, would 
pour itself into the church, finding there its leadership 
and its strength, we might have, indeed, another " new 
awakening," not less searching than that of the day of 
Jonathan Edwards. 

The special teaching for which the work of Swami 
Vivekananda stands is the explanation and interpreta- 
tion of the Vedantic philosophy. His teaching included 
such passages as the following, taken from one of his 
lectures : — 

"The Karma Yogi asks why should you require any 
motive to work ? Be beyond motives. 'To work you 
have the right, but not to the fruits thereof.' Man can 
train himself to that, says the Karma Yogi. Any work 



360 BOSTON DAYS 



that is done with a motive, instead of making us free, 
which is the goal, makes one more chain for our feet. So 
the only way is to give up all fruits of the work ; be non- 
attached. Know that this world is not ourselves or 
ourselves this world ; that we are really not the body ; 
that we really do not work. We are the self eternally 
at peace. Why should we be bound by anything? 
We must not weep. There is no weeping for the 
soul. . . . He works best who works without any motive 
power, neither for money nor anything else, and when 
a man can do that he will be a Buddha, and out of him 
will come the power to work in such a manner as to 
transform the world. This is the very ideal of Karma 
Yogi." 

The great movement under the general name of 
Christian Science was inaugurated in Boston and had 
its chief growth and development during the last quar- 
ter of the Nineteenth century. It is one that comprises 
many remarkable features. 

A very scholarly and important work was initiated in 
the modern Athens by the Society of Psychical Research 
under the direction of its accomplished secretary, Dr. 
Richard Hodgson. Professor William James, who has 
been one of the Presidents of the society ; Rev. Dr. 
Minot Judson Savage, and a large number of scholars 
and thinkers, including many of the most distinguished 
men and women in the country, have become active 
members of this society, which may be said to have 
scientifically demonstrated the actual nature of life after 
the change we call death. Of this work Dr. Hodgson 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 36l 

" My interest in psychical research is greater than ever, 
and it seems to me highly probable that before many 
years have elapsed there will be much new and valuable 
testimony before the world as the result of the labors of 
our society in favor of the spiritualistic claim that it is 
possible for our departed friends, under special condi- 
tions, to make their continued existence known to us. 
It is my own conviction that such communication is 
possible, though I hold that it is not nearly as frequent 
as most spiritualists suppose." 

Professor Dolbear of Tufts College, whose study in 
the uature of the ether has resulted in discoveries most 
important to science, has demonstrated a great range of 
new possibilities, contributing incidentally to the com- 
prehension of psychic problems. Of the possibilities of 
the ether we find Professor Dolbear saying : — 

" However large is the physical universe, and however 
exact such relations as we have established may be, it is 
daily becoming more certain that we have to do with a 
factor — the ether — the properties of which we vainly 
strive to interpret in terms of matter, the undiscovered 
properties of which ought to warn every one against the 
danger of strongly asserting what is possible and what is 
impossible in the nature of things. With the electro- 
magnetic theory of light now just established, and the 
vortex-ring theory of matter still sub-judice but with daily 
increasing evidence in its favor, one may now be sure 
that matter itself is more wonderful than any philosopher 
ever thought. Its possibilities may have been vastly 
underrated." 

In reference to certain psychic phenomena Dr. Wil- 
liam James has said : — 



362 BOSTON DAYS 



" In all these cases we are, it seems to me, fairly forced 
to choose between a physical and a moral miracle. The 
physical miracle is that knowledge may come to a person 
otherwise than by the usual use of eyes and ears. The 
moral-miracle kind of deceit is so perverse and successful 
as to find no parallel in usual experience. In the medium- 
ship of Mrs. Piper, the medium who has for some years 
been under the auspices and control of the Society, there 
are constantly in evidence facts of experience that leave 
the most critical investigator without any conceivable 
hypothesis to fall back upon other than the genuineness of 
communication from the life beyond." 

It has been the province of psychic science to project its 
discoveries of the nature of the life beyond this. Religion, 
in its usual teaching, gives the great truths in mystical 
and figurative phrase. To recognize the Divine Father 
and Jesus the Christ, and to know that He is the way, 
the truth, and the life ; to accept the truth of the im- 
mortal nature of the soul, — this is the supremely im- 
portant matter ; but, as intelligent beings, who, by the 
law of evolution, are developing into constantly higher 
states, it may be as much a part of the true province of 
knowledge to extend the domain of investigation into 
the forces of spirit, as well as into those of nature. It 
is no less reverent, surely, to inquire into the nature 
and destiny of the soul than it is to inquire into the 
nature and use of the divine creation. The intelligent 
and faithful student of psychic science is working 
toward the discovery of the new immaterial world, as 
Columbus was toward the discovery of a new continent. 
In fact, as the two hemispheres of the East and the 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 363 

West corcespond, so are this world and that just beyond 
death in correspondence. The infinite progression of 
the soul is in states or series of lives. The one lying 
just beyond this does not differ fi'om ours so greatly as 
has been believed. It is not a vague region somewhere 
in inconceivable space, where inconceivable beings wave 
palm branches ; but a world differing from this only 
in degree, and by a difference hardly more marked than 
that which lies between the New England of 1620 and 
of 1900. If one should dwell for a moment upon this 
land as the Pilgrims found it and on the meagre 
resources up to 1800 and later, as compared with the 
resources and activities of the past half century and 
more especially of those of the present decade, he will 
realize how the constantly growing control of higher 
forces of nature transforms the life of man. 

Psychic science demonstrates that those who have 
been liberated into that larger life by the process we 
name death find themselves in a realm where will and 
thought are forces. To will is to accomplish. The 
ethereal body is no longer subject to the law of gravita- 
tion. It is under the law of attraction. Communica- 
tion is carried on by that subtle and swift spiritual 
process of thought transference, or telepathy, which is 
the spirit language and of which those in this world 
are already gaining some knowledge. In this ethereal 
world a life similar to the present only higher in degree, 
is lived. There are libraries, temples of worship, halls of 
music, and art. There are the occupations of reading, 
writing, study, invention. The law of service prevails. 



364> BOSTON DAYS 



Dr. John Fiske was one of the most important and 
distinguished thinkers whose influence was a determin- 
ing one during the last quarter of the Nineteenth century. 

His literary life falls easily into two " states " as dis- 
tinct from each other as a painter's — that of a com- 
mentator on ethical philosophy which occupied him for 
the twenty years between 1860-1880, and that of an 
historical and political writer in the remaining years 
of his life. It is by the latter work that he is the more 
widely known, because he brought to bear an origi- 
nality, an initiative, and an assured energy on the latter 
that is less evident in the former. Dr. Fiske had an 
affinity for concrete facts. He was much more at home 
in the realm of the visible than in that of the invisible, 
and while his intellect was of too clear and fine an 
order for him ever to deny or ignore the cloud of wit- 
nesses, he was still more easily in touch with things 
seen than with those unseen. 

Three of the most brilliant men in modern philosophy 
are Dr. William James, Prof. Josiah Royce, and (the 
late) Frederic W. H. Myers. Mr. Myers was also en- 
dowed with the poetic gift, and he had, pre-eminently, 
the scientific imagination, with a charm of mind and 
manner that always wrought its spell. These three 
men are all of the intuitive order. They have divination. 
With Dr. Fiske, his power was that of honest labor, 
of study and research, — intense persistence, — industry 
rather than inspiration, and one remembers : 

" All aspiration is a toil ; but inspiration cometh from above, 
And is no labor." 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 365 

There can be no question, however, but that Dr. Fiske 
rendered valuable service to philosophy and even to 
some phases of spiritual truth, of whose claim to ac- 
ceptance he was hj no means assured. His mind was 
singularly free from prejudice, open to truth wherever 
he might find it, and his profound and extensive 
scholarship gave him the splendid force of his perfectly 
trained faculties. 

The philosophical work of Dr. Fiske is deeply in- 
teresting. Involving no original discovery — as Mr. 
Frederic Myers made, for instance, in regard to the 
" subliminal " nature of man — it offers a series of 
creative interpretation of Darwin and Spencer and 
Huxley that has, perhaps, contributed more to popu- 
larize philosophy than has the work of any other 
single writer. 

Dr. Fiske took the discoveries fornmlated by Darwin, 
Spencer, and Huxley, breatlied into them a still higher 
and deeper truth, stamped it with the impress of his own 
vigorous thought, and put it into general circulation. 
Is not this one of the greatest of services to con- 
temporary progress ? 

One of the fine passages from Dr. Fiske is as 
follows : — 

" One of the greatest contributions ever made to 
scientific knowledge is Herbert Spencer's profound and 
luminous exposition of life as the continuous adjustment 
of inner relations to outer relations. The extreme sim- 
plicity of the subject in its earliest illustrations is such 
that the student at first hardly suspects the wealth of 



366 BOSTON DAYS 



knowledge toward which it is pointing the way. . . . All 
life upon the globe, whether physical or psychical, repre- 
sents the continuous adjustment of inner to outer relations. 
The degree of life is low or high, according as the corre- 
spondence between internal or external relations is simple 
or complex, limited or extensive, partial or complete, 
perfect or imperfect." 

There are other passages, however, in the context 
with which the idealist would hardly agree, as when 
Dr. Fiske says that " a true theory is an adjustment of 
one's ideas to tlie external facts and that such adjust- 
ments are helps to successful living." Where would 
progress lie if one merely adjusted his ideas to the 
external facts? That is mediaeval. If America had 
adjusted her ideas to external facts we should still be 
travelling by stage-coach and canals. It is only as 
external facts are adjusted to our ideas that man 
advances. Thought must shape life. The idea must 
work outward and externalize and incarnate itself. 

The following paragraph from Dr. Fiske embodies his 
fine creative interpretation of evolution : — 

" So far as our knowledge of natui'e goes, the whole 
momentum of it carries us onward to the conclusion that 
the unseen world, as the objective term in a relation of 
fundamental importance that has co-existed with the 
whole career of mankind, has a real existence, and it is 
but following out the analogy to regard that unseen world 
as the theatre where the ethical process is destined to 
reach its full consummation. The lesson of evolution is 
that through all these weary ages the human soul lias not 
been cherishing in religion a delusive phantom, but, in 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 367 

spite of seemingly endless groping and stumbling, it has 
been rising to the recognition of its essential kinship with 
the ever-living God. Of all the implications of the doc- 
trine of evolution with regard to man, I believe the very 
deepest and strongest to be that which asserts the ever- 
lasting reality of religion." 

There is a vast amount of original discovery that is 
not so valuable a contribution to social progress as is 
this carrying the theory of evolution on to higher planes 
by Dr. Fiske, and it may be that in this single respect 
lies the highest, the most useful, and the most perma- 
nent value of his honored life. 

Through an unforeseen circumstance Dr. Fiske was 
lead into the field of historical inquiry. In his early 
life when engaged in rather miscellaneous work as 
tutor in Harvard, and delighting his friends socially 
with his musical talent, Mr. Fiske one day called 
on Mrs. Hemenway for a confidential talk regarding 
ways and means. How many of the aspirants after 
nobler achievement went to this remarkable woman for 
counsel and suggestion only the recording angel could 
tell. " To live — to have spiritual force — is the 
great thing " was one of her favorite sayings ; and 
another which she made a guiding rule of her life was : 
" God thinks of all beings, so should we ; a lovely spirit 
radiates." She was herself always hospitable to all 
genuine efibrt and aspiration ; and in her talk with Mr. 
Fiske she sought the keynote of his interest and of 
his ability. She discussed with him his ethical ideas, 
— at which Harvard then looked askance, — his views 



368 BOSTON DAYS 



of society and its betterment, bis general outlook on 
life. Finally sbe told bini of ber deep interest in tbe 
" Old Soutb " work, — its courses of lectures and 
general activity in promoting and diffusing bistorical 
knowledge, and invited him to write and. deliver an 
bistorical lecture, adding that he should receive $500 
for it. 

Mr. Fiske instantly declined — declined perforce, he 
said, assuring her that be had neither taste nor inclina- 
tion toward historic themes, that history was entirely 
out of bis line, and that, in short, such a work was too 
foreign to his nature to be possible. But Mrs. Heraen- 
way always believed in the great truth tliat there should 
be faith in the possibility of impressing others with the 
highest views. She was patient because she bad the 
vision. She caught the outlook because she lived 
always on the heights. So she urged tbe young man to 
go home and try his hand at the historical lecture. 
Still protesting that he could not, be took his departure. 
But he did try; he succeeded to Mrs. Hemenway's 
satisfaction if not to his own, and she urged him to 
follow this effort with a second one. From this time he 
set forth on his excursions into this new field of litera- 
ture with tbe result that he achieved an unqualified 
success. 

Dr. Fiske will perhaps be most permanently remem- 
bered as tbe thinker who has bridged tbe gulf between 
the Darwinian theory of evolution and the spiritual 
philosophy of Hegel, Kant, and Emerson. In one lec- 
ture be said : " If the cosmic force of the universe were 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 369 

placed on one side and the psychic force of man on 
the other, the latter would outweigh the former." 

The home of Mrs. Mary Hemenway was in Mount 
Vernon Street, on Beacon Hill, — a large, old-fashioned 
house of a half century ago, with spacious, sunny 
rooms, in which were gathered many rare and beauti- 
ful treasures of art in paintings, sculpture, and bric-a- 
brac. The family keep her rooms very much as she left 
them, and her beautiful presence still seems to pervade 
the house. 

She is among those who, though vanished into the 
unknown, are held in daily remembrance in Boston. 
Many of the perpetual benefactions that go on quietly 
and regularly year after year, with as little parade about 
them as the movement of the solar system, are due to 
Mrs. Hemenway. One of these is the system of " Old 
South " lectures, as they are locally known — a series 
given each summer, in the Old South Church. Mrs. 
Hemenway founded these lectures, making them free 
to all, — the necessary restriction of the audience being 
that each applicant apply, in his own handwriting 
with a stamped and addressed envelope for a course 
ticket, which is sent by return post. If ever there was 
literally a power behind a throne it was Mrs. Hemen- 
way. The throne was her multitude of good works ; 
the power was herself. She had a very potent rather 
than prominent individuality. She possessed the art of 
detaching her personality from her philanthropies to a 
singular degree. How she contrived during long years 
of such active participation in public work to elude the 

24 



370 BOSTON DAYS 



omnipresent interviewer and personal paragrapher is a 
mystery. Her name is less widely or less generally 
known, than that of multitudes of trivial and insig- 
nificant people who contrive some way to be always 
flaunting themselves in public view. The character of 
Mrs. Hemenway offers a most interesting study. 

She was a gentlewoman of an older day. She had a 
quiet and gentle dignity of manner, a refinement and a 
certain impressiveness of the good sense that distin- 
guished her. She would not have been called a 
brilliant woman, yet to this great natural poise and 
solidity of intellect she added a symmetry of culture in 
literature, art, and social life that would have graced 
society in any part of the world. In personal ap- 
pearance she was plain, although no one could ever 
fail to recognize the stamp of the " dame of high 
degree " about her. Her face was rather long and thin, 
and this aspect was emphasized by the way she wore 
her hair, combed down in plain bands over the ears in 
the fashion of a bygone age, albeit a little revived at 
present. Her costuming had always a certain air of 
quiet elegance, and her presence on any social occasion 
was one to inspire an interest in learning her views of 
life and affairs. She had the presence that inspired one 
with a feeling that he would like to talk with her — 
or to hear her talk — more freely than the time or place 
would allow. To her more intimate circle she was a 
most interesting woman. She entered sympathetically 
into many phases of life, and whether one saw her as 
the grande dame, giving the most elaborate ball of the 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 371 

season for her granddaughter, or as the philanthropist, 
she was always the central figure. 

One very marked trait in her character was the 
eminent balance of judgment with which she justly 
appreciated, but never over or under estimated, her 
wealth. 

Mrs. Hemenway had virtual control of a large fortune. 
She was the daughter of a wealthy New York merchant 
— a Mr. Tileston from whom she inherited large 
estates, and her husband, the late Augustus Hemenway, 
of Boston, made a large fortune in South American 
silver mines. While she appreciated at its value and 
held as a responsibility her great fortune, she never 
failed to estimate qualities of character as values far 
above money. She might shower material blessings as 
a friend or neighbor in all conceivable ways of delicate 
and valuable gifts, important aid, and benefactions in 
general ; but if the friend gave her in return the com- 
panionship that she prized, she held herself to be the 
debtor, the person who was under special obligation. 
This was a very marked as well as beautiful trait in her 
character, and illustrates the refined quality of her mind. 
If she gave one bread and salt, and he gave her thought, 
suggestion, sympathetic companionship, she counted 
herself the person who received favors and benefits, 
not the one conferring them. 

Mrs. Hemenway's philanthropies were very extended 
and took largely an educational form. History and 
ethnology enlisted her profound interest. It was she 
who enabled Mr. Gushing to pursue his studies of the 



372 BOSTON DAYS 



Zuni Indians, and it was she, also, who made pos- 
sible the preservation of that venerable historic relic, 
the "Old South," donating, herself, half the sum — 
$200,000 — required for saving it, and she alone es- 
tablished it as an institute of history with its present 
system of mid-summer lectures. 

The visit of Matthew Arnold, the distinguished poet 
and critic, to Boston in the early eighties was an event 
of profound interest. He delivered the three lectures 
(which are now published in the volume entitled " Dis- 
courses in America ") before large and attentive 
audiences ; and in his incomparable critique on Emer- 
son he sought to approach truth by the law of ex- 
clusion. Emerson was not a great philosopher, he 
asserted ; he was not, as judged by Milton's test, a great 
poet ; he was not even a great man of letters. The 
hearers listened — could one ever forget that hour ? — 
in breathless amazement. There sat the majestic form 
of Phillips Brooks ; a little farther on, and the keen, 
delicate, searching countenance of Dr. Holmes was seen 
in profile ; Mrs. Howe's uplifted face with luminous 
eyes ; all around sat men and women of world- 
renowned fame, and all — perhaps without a single ex- 
ception — worshippers of Boston's idol — Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. What would happen to Mr. Arnold ? one 
inwardly questioned. Would they fall upon him and 
rend him — these embodiments of Boston's finest 
culture ? One was not half sure that he did not long 
that they should, for Emerson was the universal idol, 
the star of devotion. But one waited. What would 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 373 

Mr. Arnold say ? What did he say ? He said that 
Emerson was " the friend and the aider of those who 
would live in the spirit." There was the magnificent 
affirmative at last, whose force and splendor of signifi- 
cance overbore a thousand denials and negatives about 
men of letters, or even poets. For the life of the spirit 
is the one supreme end for which all live, — the end 
toward which all creation travelleth ; nay, it is the only 
life ; for when one does not live in the spirit, he does not 
live at all ; he merely — exists. 

The Lowell Institute, which is always the theatre of 
great thought, has always been peculiarly fortunate in 
securing among its lecturers the great specialists in 
modern science, as well as the most thoughtful critics 
of literature and life. Among the great lectures of 
recent years must be noted that of Dr. Albert A. 
Michelson, the inventor of the " echelon spectroscope," 
by which the measurement of a beam of light may be 
obtained, — a new achievement in science. Dr. Michel- 
son is one of the younger men who are already leading 
authorities on physics. He has made discoveries which 
give him the first rank in science. German by lineage 
and birth, he passed his boyhood in California and, 
entering the Naval Academy at Annapolis, was in the 
navy for eleven years after graduating. Before he was 
twenty-three he had made original discoveries which 
rendered his name familiar to European savants. As 
the years passed it became evident that he had work to 
do requiring freedom and entire devotion, and he left 
the navy for the laboratory. Later he was for three 



374 BOSTON DAYS 



years professor in Clark University at Worcester, Mass., 
and from thence accepted a chair in the University of 
Chicago. His lectures before the Lowell Institute 
discussed " Light Waves and their Application," in- 
cluding wave-motion, the spectrum analysis, the ap- 
plications of light waves to astronomical measurements, 
the measurement of double stars, of diameters of 
satellites, the possibility of determining the size of 
stars, and the effects of magnetism on light. 

Professor Michelson has devised an exact and verifi- 
able system of measurement by means of light waves. 
For this, and for the invention of a still more intricate 
apparatus called the echelon spectroscope, the French 
government awarded to him a medal, and the exposi- 
tion authorities have given him pre-eminence in the 
science department. The instrument measuring light 
is called the '' interferometer." It was found that the 
length of a wave of light of a certain color is always 
the same under similar conditions of temperature. 
There is no spot on the globe where the interferometer 
may not be used to measure off the length of a metre in 
light. The red light in a shaft of white sunshine may 
be singled out and its progress measured in wave lengths, 
and a million and a half of these are found equal to 
the length of the metre. 

Professor Michelson's interferometer consists of a set 
of prisms which divide light into these wave lengths. 
He counted fifteen hundred of these waves and found 
that it required exactly a thousand times that number 
to make the length of the Paris metre. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 375 

His device of the echelon spectroscope, for which he 
received the pre-eminence, is the most delicate optical 
instrument ever made. It enables science to divide 
light ten times more minutely than ever before, and it is 
the most important work done in physics in many years. 
Professor Michelson demonstrated the practicability of 
his spectroscope months before he succeeded in getting 
a lensmaker to undertake the work of constructing the 
new instrument. 

In the scientific museum at Sevres is this interfero- 
meter, invented by Dr. Michelson. In his early youth 
he was in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Paris for scientific 
study, and enjoyed a range of privileges open only 
to great scholars. The distinguished Von Helmholtz 
called upon him, — an honor enjoyed by few. Noted 
savants in Paris gave him the most cordial recogni- 
tion. Dr. Michelson's lectures before the Lowell In- 
stitute discussed light waves and their interference 
and measurement ; the utilization of these waves by 
microscope and telescope ; the outline of spectrum 
analysis ; the determination of the standard miles and 
the measurements of double stars, of the diameters 
of satellites and smaller planets, the possibility of 
determining the size of stars, the effect of mag- 
netism on light, the ether, and the evidence for the 
existence of a medium which propagates the light 
waves. 

Modern science is not only the fairyland of the poet, 
but it is the great living fountain of truth out of which 
spiritual as well as physical laws are discovered. 



376 BOSTON DAYS 



It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that there 
is nothing in the modern development of science that 
is not more or less clearly prophesied in the prose or 
the poetry of Emerson. He was the great spiritual seer, 
greater than even his most devoted disciple has yet 
conceived. It will require the progress of another 
century to adequately realize how lofty and far-discern- 
ing was Emerson's quality of mind. He was evidently 
in spiritual rapport with unseen forces and high intelli- 
gences. His works are full of vital hints and rich 
suggestions, which are more and more emerging from a 
nebulous state into the practical actualities of daily 
experience. 

For instance, in the discovery of liquid air we have a 
transparent, sparkling fluid that boils on ice, freezes 
pure alcohol, and burns steel ; one cannot but recall the 
prophetic intimation of this in Emerson's line, " Makes 
flame to freeze and ice to boil," in a line in his poem 
entitled " Spiritual Laws," a part of which runs : — 

" Sole and self-commanded works 
Fears not undermining days; 
Grows by decays, 

And by the famous might that lurks 
In reaction and recoil, 
Makes flame to freeze and ice to boil." 

Another of the remarkable courses of scientific lec- 
tures before the Lowell Institute was that by Prof. 
T. J. J. See, on "Sidereal Astronomy," in which he 
announced a new nebular theory. This lecture was 
an event in contemporary scientific progress. Dr. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 377 

See is one of the eminent body of astronomers who 
made prominent the work at Flagstaff, Arizona, the 
Observatory established by Prof. Percival Lowell, and 
which is in some respects the most important centre 
of late of astronomical activities. Recently Dr. See 
was appointed Director of the Naval University in 
Washington. 

He has announced a new discovery in astronomical 
physics which gives to science an absolutely new law, 
one that supersedes and, indeed, negatives the famous 
nebular hypothesis of La Place, which was that the 
luminous bodies are now cooling from a heated and in- 
candescent state. Professor See's hypothesis is just the 
opposite of this, his theory being that all the starry, 
planetary, and nebulous bodies are growing hotter, and 
that their temperatures vary inversely to the radii, — 
that is, the less the radius, the greater the heat ; the 
greater the radius, the less the heat. 

It is a tremendous event if a man has now arisen 
who discovers a new theory that completely revolution- 
izes the astronomical hypothesis that has heretofore 
been accepted and held since its first pronmlgation by 
La Place. His conception, as finally elaborated, is 
that all the celestial bodies first existed in disconnected 
matter, which, under the law of gravitation, became 
gradually resolved into nebulae and is now on its way 
to become solid bodies. La Place conceived that all 
matter in its nebulous and pre-nebulous stage is in- 
tensely hot, becoming incandescent ; then appearing in 
a state of white heat, like Sirius ; then red, like Aide- 



378 BOSTON DAYS 



baran, and still later becoming black, non-luminous, and 
invisible. 

During his researches at Flagstaff, Dr. See found 
discrepancies in this theory which refused to fit existing 
facts. He was making a specialty of the study of 
multiple stars; he was engaged in profound mathe- 
matical calculations, especially in reference to the dark 
twin companion of Sirius, and it was during this pro- 
longed period of research that it first occurred to him 
that the fundamental idea itself, which he, in com- 
mon with all the astronomers since La Place, had 
accepted as the foundation of all work, — that this 
hypothesis was, in itself, wrong ; and that the true 
theory might be that all the attenuated nebulae was in 
a gaseous, but not heated, state. Experimenting, then, 
on this basis, he found that it fitted in with a constantly 
increasing array of facts. He began to believe that the 
tenuous nebulae, instead of being in a state of intense 
heat, is instead very near the " absolute zero " of 
physics, which is some 500 degrees below the zero of 
the Fahrenheit scale. 

Subsequently, the stages of these bodies were of 
increasing heat; and Dr. See pointed out that very 
bright stars, as Sirius and Vega, are approaching the 
end of their cosmic life, and are on the way to become 
dark and invisible. The sun is approaching the state 
where it will give off less heat ; but as the change is 
yet some millions of years in the future, this fact will 
not aflFect the market price of coal. One statement 
made by Dr. See peculiarly appeals to the imagination — 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 379 

the assertion that the heavens are probably full of dark 
bodies that, having outlived their luminous stages, are 
not visible, and also of far grander and more vast bodies 
of nebulae than have been yet discovered. 

If this hypothesis shall prove to be one that is 
accepted by modern science and adopted as the working 
basis for all future speculative research in astro-physics, 
the date of its announcement in Boston, before the 
choice and critical audience inseparably associated 
with the Lowell Institute, was on the evening of 
Jan. 10, 1899, a very memorable date in scientific 
history. Not since the lectures of Prof. Benjamin 
Pierce in 1879 — twenty years before — had there been 
given under the distinguished auspices of the Lo\v^ell 
Institute a course of scientific lectures so important as 
that on " Sidereal Astronomy " by Dr. See. 

Thomas Jefferson Jackson See was born near Mont- 
gomery City, Mo., in 1866. His father, Noah See, is a 
descendant of an old German family, the name being 
originally Zhee. His ancestors came to America before 
the War of the Revolution, and some members of the 
family did good service in that war. The elder See 
was a civil engineer, a man of great intelligence, and a 
lover of books. The son was a quiet, thoughtful lad, who 
was temperamentally attracted to the intense observation 
of natural phenomena. His mathematical instincts 
dominated him. He would lie on the ground and 
watch the tops of waving trees and try to see in them 
a rhythmic harmony. He instinctively counted every- 
thing. He lost himself in Humboldt's " Cosmos " with 



380 BOSTON DAYS 



the most absorbed attention, and he became fascinated 
with the work of Helmholtz — who was afterward to be 
his instructor, little as the lad could then have dreamed 
of the privilege. Yet he did dream of things as won- 
derful. The world outside his horizon line haunted his 
imagination. In his early teens he decided that he would 
go to Germany to study. " The attractions are pro- 
portional to the destinies," says Emerson, and Mr. See 
proved the truth of this. 

It is related that an old Quaker replied to a man 
who was describing the admirable system of activities, 
by means of which every moment of his time was filled 
" And, friend, when does thee think ? " Mr. See found 
time to think. It is a privilege that college or uni- 
versity cannot invariably insure to its students. The 
early opportunities offered to him were meagre, and still 
this very lack of outward fulness facilitated in his case 
the inner progress. His nature required solitude and 
leisure rather than society and exacting demand. 

He entered the University of Missouri taking the clas- 
sical and scientific courses united, and graduated in 
four years with brilliant triumphs. He had made a 
constant companion of La Place's " Mechanique Celeste," 
and he then adopted the nebular hypothesis of this 
astronomer, with much enthusiasm, little divining that 
within ten years his own work would negative its 
meaning and prove that its reverse were true. During 
his last two years at the university he spent his 
vacations at work in its Observatory, and it was there 
that he initiated the special interest of his life and began 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 381 

to observe and study the problems of double stars. It 
occurred to liini tliat no one had ever made research 
into their development, and his thesis (which gained for 
him the Missouri astronomical medal) took for its 
subject " The Origin of Binary Stars." 

His dream of entering the University of Berlin was 
fulfilled in 1889, and setting out for that city, alone, 
without friends, and carrying with him only a letter of 
introduction from the Governor of Missouri to the 
authorities at Berlin, he was yet admitted to all the 
rich resources. During four years he studied under 
Helmholtz, Zoller, and others of the great German 
masters. During the vacations he travelled in Egypt, 
Greece, Italy, and England, and not only familiarized 
himself with the noted places of antiquity, but became 
acquainted with many celebrated men, among whom 
was the younger Darwin. 

One of the memorable nights in Boston was that 
when the Viking hero. Dr. Nansen, appeared, to describe 
the marvellous effects of life in the Polar regions. 
A great reception had been given in his honor and 
all the enthusiasts of the town who could by any 
possibility crowd into Music Hall and its adjoining 
corridors, were in evidence. For that moment, at least, 
Dr. Nansen was considered to be in many respects the 
greatest man of the Nineteenth century. 

" His tongue was framed to music, 

And his hand was armed with skill ; 
His face was the mould of beauty, 
And his heart the throne of will." 



382 BOSTON DAYS 



These lines of Emerson's seemed written to describe 
the tall, fair sea-king ; the typical Viking — blond, 
slender, tall, and well-built as a pine-tree from his 
native northland, with those brilliant, sapphire-blue 
eyes, flashing and all-comprehensive, that indicate the 
electric temperament which is born to conquer and 
prevail. " There are men," says Emerson, *' who, by 
their sympathetic attractions, carry nations with them 
and lead the activity of the human race. Wherever the 
mind of such a man goes nature will accompany him ; 
perhaps there are men whose magnetisms are of that 
force to draw material and elemental powers, and 
where they appear immense instrumentalities organize 
around them." 

This elixir of power, distilled, who shall say how or 
where by some alchemy of mind and soul, seemed the 
gracious and lavish dower of Dr. Nansen. The man 
was still more fascinatingly interesting than the achieve- 
ment. This electric temperament that dominates all 
it meets as inevitably as the stone falls by the law of 
gravitation ; that magnetizes toward it event and cir- 
cumstance and the aid of men and organizes all these 
forces into one aim, is a deeply interesting study. One 
recalls William Watson's wonderful lines : — 

" Spirits, with whom the stars connive 
To work their will." 

Napoleon once said : " All the great captains have 
performed vast achievements by conforming with the 
rules of the art — by adjusting efforts to obstacles." 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 383 

This describes Dr. Nansen's method. The special idea 
on which he based his entire Polar expedition has 
hardly been emphasized as yet. It was precisely on 
this great truth — to conform with the prevailing laws 
— to " adjust efforts to obstacles " that Dr. Nansen 
confronted the fact of the ice drift in the polar regions. 
Heretofore all explorers had encountered it as an ob- 
stacle. Dr. Nansen proposed to take advantage of it as 
an assistance. It was merely the decision to row with 
the tide and not against it ; to conform with the law 
of gravitation, and not oppose it ; to saw with the 
grain of the wood and not across it. In its various 
applications this law is the key of all successful en- 
deavor, and of all happiness. Most people are born with 
some predetermined bias of inclination and tempera- 
ment, and he is the successful man who follows this 
through good report or through evil report, as may be, 
through ease or through hardship ; but, in any case, 
with fidelity to his star. Whether it '' pays " — in the 
cant of the world — is of no consequence. That which 
is of consequence is that one should develop the 
best that is in him as it is for this cause that he comes 

into the world. 

" I can live 
At least my soul's life, without alms from men, 
And if it be in heaven instead of earth, 
Let heaven look to it — I am not afraid." 

Mrs. Browning's noble words are the most practicable 
of counsels. The unhappiness and the misfortunes of 
life are largely those that spring from not keeping faith 
with one's ideals. 



384 BOSTON DAYS 



Certainly Dr. Nansen kept faith with his. He 
pondered over this fact of the ice drift, and that which 
has been the chief and insurmountable obstacle to 
previous explorers became to him ways and means, an 
ally of nature's. This is the secret of all successful 
achievement, — to discern the laws of nature and put 
one's self in harmony with them. Men are now learn- 
ing to harness the lightning, to make the cataract of 
Niagara do labor in New York, and as these natural 
forces are taken advantage of, in that proportion does 
life become useful, beautiful, and enjoyable. Dr. Nansen 
conceived the plan of building a ship that should with- 
stand ice pressure and thus float with the tide in that 
current that leads to the open polar sea. Navigators 
said it could not be done ; that the grind of the ice in 
winter, at all events, when the huge masses are like 
mountains of granite, would crush any ship ever built. 
His reply was to build the " Fram," which withstood 
the pressure, and after three years' voyaging safely 
returned. 

The story of this voyage and the explorations by 
sledge after leaving the ship held spellbound the 
large and brilliant audience that assembled to assist at 
the appearance of the great explorer. 

Of the experience when they entered into the frozen 
silence of the winter night Dr. Nansen said : — 

" Among our scientific pursuits may also be mentioned 
the determining of the temperature of water and its 
degree of saltness at varying depths ; the collection and 
examination of such animals as are to be found in these 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 385 

northern seas; the ascertaining of the amount of elec- 
tricity iu the air and other things. One salient feature 
in all the voyage was the exquisite purity of the air and 
the consequent freedom from illness or even lassitude, 
which indicates that the human body is far more depend- 
ent on good air than has ever been realized." 

Describing the scene he gave this vivid picture : — 

"Nothing more beautiful can exist than the arctic 
night. It is dreamland painted in the imagination's 
most delicate tints. It is color etherealized. One shade 
melts into the other so you cannot tell where one ends 
and the other begins, and yet they are all there. No 
forms — it is all faint, dreamy color music. A far-away, 
long-drawn art melody on united strings. Is not all life's 
beauty high and delicate and pure like this night? Give 
it colors and it is no longer so beautiful. The sky is like 
an enormous cupola, blue at the zenith, shading down 
into green, and then into lilac and violet at the edges. 
Over the ice fields there are cold, violet-blue shadows, 
with lighter pink tints where a ridge here and there 
catches the last reflection of the vanished day. Up in 
the blue of the cupola shine the stars, speaking peace as 
they always do, those unchanging friends. In the south 
stands a large, red-yellow moon, encircled by a yellow 
ring and light golden clouds floating on a blue back- 
ground. Presently the aurora borealis shakes over the 
vault of heaven its veil of glittering silver, changing now 
to yellow, now to green, now to red. It spreads, it con- 
tracts again in restless change; next it breaks into 
waving, many- folded bands of shining silver, over which 
shoot billows of glittering rays, and then the glory van- 
ishes. Presently it shimmers in tongues of flame over 
the very zenith, and then again it shoots a bright ray 



386 BOSTON DAYS 



right up from the horizon, until the whole melts away in 
the moonlight, and it is as though one heard the sigh of 
a departing spirit. Here and there are left a few waving 
streamers of light, vague as a foreboding — they are the 
dust from the aurora's glittering cloak. But now it is 
growing again ; now lightnings shoot up, and the endless 
game begins afresh. And all the time this utter stillness, 
impressive as the symphony of infinitude." 

Prof. Percival Lowell, the grandson of the founder 
of the Lowell Institute, is an eminent scholar and 
traveller. Passing many years in the Orient he 
wrote a valuable book called "The Soul of the Far 
East," a fine interpretation of its inner life, and when 
it was announced that he would give a course of four 
lectures on " Japanese Occultism " before the Lowell 
Institute a wide interest was aroused. Of late years 
Professor Lowell has assumed the directorship of his 
own Observatory in Arizona, where he has contributed 
to Astronomy many valuable observations. 

Another of the great courses of Lowell Institute 
lectures was that of Rev. G. Frederick Wright, D.D., 
LL.D., professor of the Harmony of Science and Reve- 
lation in Oberlin. His series of lectures on the " Scien- 
tific Aspect of Christian Evidences " was one of the 
most notable features of the intellectual life of Boston, 
and they were indeed of so unusual a character as to 
be only described as epoch-making. 

The scientist who is a theologian, the tlieologian 
who is a scientist, are united in Dr. Wright. His course 
was one so exceptional in its character, not only in a 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 387 

peculiarly vital and suggestive and stimulating effect on 
the mind of the hearer but also in its great fund of 
information, as to leave a profound impression on the 
audiences. Dr. Wright was born in Whitehall, N. Y., 
in the romantic Lake George region, whose scenery, 
doubtless, fostered his inclination to study nature. 
With two of his brothers he graduated at Oberlin, 
and he filled the chair of Christian Evidences in his 
Alma INIater for twelve years, before the creation of 
his present professorship, — the chair of Harmony of 
Science and Revelation. Before this, however, he 
had been settled in his first ministry in a small town 
in Vermont, where, in the intervals of pastoral work, 
he began studying the geological formation, and 
there formulated the theory of the terminal moraine 
which he was destined afterward to verify and to 
record with such scholarly detail and scientific 
authority. Later he was called to Andover, and a 
friend condoled with him as being settled in a i)lace 
where there was no opportunity for his geological re- 
search. "But the opportunity I found in my own 
backyard," he said smilingly, "in the rifts of sand." 
Dr. Wright's discovery of the terminal moraine (the 
limit of the glacial drift) brought him into note among 
scientists. Called to Oberlin, he was a distinguished 
figure in the Society for Historical Research of the 
Western Reserve, and from 1883-86 was occupied in 
scientific work for the government. He visited Alaska 
in 1886 — just before the tourist period began — and 
passed a month encamped at the foot of the INIuir 



388 BOSTON DAYS 



glacier. The sublimity of the scenery there surpasses all 
description, he has said. Constantly there resounds the 
deafening crash as huge masses of the glacier break and 
fall. It will be remembered that the noted book, " The 
Ice Age in America," is by Dr. Wright, and it is one 
whose interest rivals that of romance. In the summer 
of 1896 he visited Greenland, one of the scientists on 
board the ill-starred " Miranda," and in a work called 
" Greenland Ice Fields and Life in North America," are 
embodied the observations of that momentous journey. 

The death of Prof. Benjamin Apthorp Gould of 
Harvard, the distinguished astronomer, which occurred 
in 1896, removed another of the great lecturers associated 
with the Lowell Institute. 

It may be remembered that it was Dr. Gould who 
founded the Observatory at Cordova, in the Argen- 
tine Republic, and devoted forty years to the work of 
studying the Southern heavens. The story of his life is 
one of singular interest. He was born in Boston (in 
1826), and was one of those precocious children of the 
earlier New England life. A child who read at the 
age of three, who was translating Horace at five, and 
writing essays upon electricity and other scientific topics 
at the age of ten, graduating from Harvard at nineteen, 
and enjoying the friendships of such men as Humboldt 
and Gauss before he was twenty-five, — it will be seen 
that his was an unusual individuality. In Paris he 
studied astronomy under Arago, and returning to 
America he entered into work with an energy of vigor 
and a power of original insight tliat wrought new 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 389 

results. For instance, it was Dr. Gould who first 
thought of using electricity to determine longitudinal 
distances. He founded (in 1867) the first astronomical 
journal ever published in this country, carrying it on 
some fifteen years at his own expense. He organized 
the Dudley Observatory. But the great and distinctive 
work of his life was that done in South America. At 
Cordova he founded an Observatory which has grown to 
be one of the most superbly appointed of the world. 
He has contributed largely to the literature of astronom- 
ical science, his most significant work being entitled 
" Urananetry of the Southern Heavens." For sixteen 
years he devoted himself to studying the Southern 
heavens by night and recording by day. He made four 
different independent observations of each star before 
deciding on the result. 

Dr. Gould took his family with him to South America, 
and they shared patiently the long exile from home and 
friends. 

On his return (in 1885) Dr. Holmes was the poet 
at a banquet given to him, and some stanzas of this 
post-prandial greeting run : — 

" Science has kept her midnight taper burning 
To greet thy coming with its vestal flame ; 
Friendship has murmured, ' When art thou returning ? ' 
' Not yet ! Not yet ! ' the answering message came. 

"Thine was unstinted zeal, unchilled devotion, 

While the blue realm had kingdoms to explore — 
Patience, like his who ploughed the unfurrowed ocean, 
Till o'er its margin loomed San Salvador." 



390 BOSTON DAYS 



Dr. Gould held an important place among American 
astronomers, in that his work has been of the largest 
scope and involving discoveries and corroboration of 
important tlieories. His work in mapping the Southern 
heavens corresponds, indeed, to that of the famous 
Argelander in exploring and recording the stars of the 
Northern heavens. He was the great pioneer in the 
astronomical work of this country ; and his voluntary 
exile and unwearied work, amid deprivations and loss 
and discomforts, revealed a quality of spirit unusually 
brave and heroic. 

Prof. Rhys Davids, Ph.D., LL.D., the secretary of 
the Royal Asiatic Society in London, gave a course of 
six lectures on " Buddhism " before the Lowell Insti- 
tute. The special topics to be considered are " Evolu- 
tion of Religious Thought in India," " Buddhist Books," 
" The Life of the Buddha," " The Secret of Buddha in 
the Circle of Life and the Four Truths," "Mystic 
Trance and Arahatship," and " The Ideal of the Later 
Buddhism." 

Professor Davids is a profound Oriental scholar and 
a man of unquestionable authority ; but he expounded 
Buddhism as a man would expound Christianity who 
judged it exclusively from the time of the early Chris- 
tian Fathers. 

Still another of the great lecture courses of the 
Lowell Institute was that of Prof. Hugo JMUnster- 
berg of Harvard on " The Results of Experimental 
Psychology," and the Lowell Institute was as crowded 
as if the issues of life and death were involved in hear- 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 391 

iiig the popular Gerniau professor with the fascinating 
foreign accent. Professor Miinsterberg declared that 
this science stands now about where physics did in tlie 
Seventeenth century, — that is to say, that in the true 
sense there are as yet no "results." Its chief result 
he finds in the ffict that we know our mental states are 
endlessly more complex, and offer more difficulties to the 
understanding than any former psychology imagined. 
Such statements as this from a learned foreigner capti- 
vated Boston, which is everlastingly sure that its own 
mental states are far more complex, more profound, and 
more vitally important than those of any other com- 
munity. Boston was, indeed, so engaged in this fasci- 
nating problem of its own mental condition that it 
experienced a rapturous joy in hearing them so ably 
analyzed from the very latest and most approved scien- 
tific point of view. 

A course given by Professor James of Harvard on 
"Exceptional Mental States" produced a profound 
impression, a course whose specific subjects were 
" Dreams and Hypnotism," " Hysteria,'' " x\utomatism," 
" ]\Iultiple Personality," " Demoniacal Possessions," 
" Witchcraft," " Degeneration," and " Genius," and 
which excited the deepest interest on the part of all 
interested in metaphysical speculation and psychical 
phenomena. 

Under its present curator. Prof. William E. Sedgwick, 
the Lowell Institute has entered on a still greater scope 
of power and splendor, and its platform represents the 
highest results of modern thought in literature, history, 



39^ BOSTON DAYS 



political and social economy, art, jurisprudence, science, 
and ethics. 

Boston has always been the most sympatlietic and 
hospitable of cities to both the lyric and dramatic stage, 
and the critical appreciation given to Rachel, Edwin 
Forrest, Fechter, Edwin Booth, and Adelaide Neilson 
repeated itself during the last two decades of the Nine- 
teenth century when the greatest stars of the latter day 
drama, Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Mrs. Agnes Booth 
(now Mrs. John Schoeffel), Sir Henry Irving and Miss 
Ellen Terry, and Signora Duse appeared from time to 
time. Other actors of importance and authentic claim 
to histrionic greatness were also seen during this 
period, and Boston has been singularly fortunate in 
having in her midst a great critic of the drama, Mr. 
Henry A. Clapp, whose faithful and brilliant work as 
one of the most critical interpreters known to the 
modern stage, has been further extended by many 
courses of his lectures on the -Shakspearian drama that 
have been in the nature of an educational illumination 
on dramatic art. Mr. Clapp's finely discriminating 
work, both as the critic on the more important presen- 
tation of each season, and as the lecturer before the 
Lowell Institute and on other platforms, has contributed 
immeasurably both to the higher progress of the drama 
and to tlie general enlightenment of the people. The 
appearance of Signora Duse in Boston was an event of 
moment ; considering that her language was far less 
familiar than that of French to the average audience, 
and that her plays were neither great nor new, the 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 393 

interest registered the remarkable power of her person- 
ality and the force of her art. Her repertoire was 
limited to " Camille," " Fedora," and the two short 
plays " Cavalleria Rusticana " and ^' La Locaudrera " 
played as a double bill at one performance. The play 
of " Camille," though a perennial favorite, has long since 
lost the charm of novelty, and "Fedora" is not an 
attractive play as a whole, while the two brief plays 
were transcriptions of Italian peasant life offering no 
charm of scenery or dress, but portraying with match- 
less art that phase of Italy. 

The contrast of temperament between Signora Duse 
and Madame Bernhardt is, if not as wide as a barn- 
door, or as deep as a well, at least one to impress 
itself. 

Madame Bernhardt, electric, vivacious, and Parisienne 
to her finger-tips, overflows with observation and com- 
ment. She is sympathetic ; she is attuned by tempera- 
ment and training to be en evidence. Signora Duse is 
remote by temperament. The currents are not in play, 
and she is, too, far less cosmopolitan than Bernhardt. 
Speaking no English, she finds it difficult to enter into 
the life around her. The French feel far less auy bar- 
rier of language than do the Italians or Russians. The 
French language is so universally that of educated 
people the world over that the difference of race is 
hardly felt. 

In Madame Duse one saw a tall, slender woman, yet 
not characterized by the willowy grace of Madame Bern- 
hardt: with an interesting presence, but not one of 



,394 BOSTON DAYS 



beauty or even charm ; with a countenance strong, 
mobile, and capable of the most subtle gradations of 
expression; black, abundant hair, and dark, luminous 
eyes, — eyes that would redeem even positive plainness 
into something not unlike beauty. She has the most 
expressive face that one may see on the stage to-day. 
But all this that is studied at first is forgotten after all, 
as the play proceeds. Never was there an artist of 
such marvellous, such incredible self-effacement. Her 
own personality disappears from her creation as that of 
a painter from an ideal figure he had painted on canvas. 
Her " Camille " offers, virtually, an original creation, and 
has little in common with that of Bernhardt or of 
Modjeska. The character is less accented and is held 
to a perfectly consistent conception. There is a per- 
ceptible shade less of the delicacy and modesty that 
characterizes women of the monde rather than of the 
demi-monde, though never degenerating into any posi- 
tive repulsiveness ; but a suggestion of Bohemianism 
which would not be seen in refined life. There is also a 
touch of business shrewdness, finally conquered by love, 
in her relations with Armand. The death scene is per- 
fectly quiet, and the entire effect from first to last is 
eminently natural. Her dressing is dainty, rich, and 
beautiful, but her gowns are the costumes of the draw- 
ing-room and not of the stage. They are artistic, and 
not theatrical. 

The great seasons of Wagner opera in Boston under 
the conduct of Walter Damrosch were events of magni- 
tude and of far-reachiug importance. Aside from their 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 395 

enjoyment, they offered such store of culture, of stimu- 
lus, of imaginative development as only can be gained 
from the operas of Wagner, 

Walter Damrosch himself is a remarkable person- 
ality. Notwithstanding the claim that Alvary, Sucher, 
Marie Brema, Rothmuhl, Klafsky, Lilli Lehmann, Heri' 
Schott, and Fraulein Gadski made the most wonder- 
ful group of Wagner artists the world has known, 
it could almost be said that the star of an opera was 
Walter Damrosch. Promptly to the minute he was in 
his place in the orchestra grasping his baton. From 
this moment — 7.30 p. m. — until 12, and in the longer 
operas until half or three-quarters of an hour later, he 
fulfilled his arduous duties with a perfection of preci- 
sion, a universal perception of the movements of each 
member of his orchestra and of everything on the stage, 
that was extraordinary. Did the fairies bend over his 
cradle and lay upon him the spell of rhythmic charmed 
success ? Was it as unique in its nature as the magic 
fire that surrounds Brlinhilde when she is left to her 
long sleep on the mountain ? For this ability to always 
be ready, to always fill one's place and do one's work 
and be in perfect rhythmic accord with the occasion, is 
far more a matter of psychic than of physical power. 

It was interesting to watch the conductor as he 
wielded the baton. A skilled student in physiognomy 
says that Mr. Damrosch has the Beethoven mouth 
and the Napoleonic nose. His brow is broad and 
square and of an almost classic perfection of outline. 
His countenance has the glow and fineness of the in- 



.396 BOSTON DAYS 



spirational, and the firmness and purpose of the execu- 
tive power. A New York critic says that Walter 
Damrosch was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. 
He was born with something better, of which perhaps 
the golden spoon may be typical, — a fund of psychic 
energy which manifests itself in persistence of purpose. 
When the elder Damrosch died, it seemed incredible 
that the son should take up the baton. He was young ; 
he was inexperienced ; and to be the leader of an 
orchestra of seventy-five musicians demanded something 
more than the musical ability alone. It means the 
ability to get along well, as the phrase goes, with his 
artists ; to preserve discipline among a large body of 
men, many of whom were greatly his senior in years ; 
it meant, too, preserving artistic enthusiasm and inspir- 
ing their personal loyalty. Anton Seidl was in the 
field, a formidable rival. Yet conditions are always 
conquerable to the conquerors. 

Walter Damrosch is the conqueror born. He is a 
natural leader. He wins, he pleases, he inspires, he 
compels. He has great magnetism and boiiJiomie. 
He is generous, ardent, enthusiastic, and high-souled. 
He has also a remarkable balance of judgment ; he is 
artistic in his ardor, discriminating in his enthusiasm. 
He is not carried away by a whim or a fantasy. He 
has a large endowment of that common sense which 
Gnizot pronounces the " genius of humanity." 

All this successful accomplishment of a purpose has 
its springs in that intense psychical energy whose mani- 
festation is persistence. Herbert Spencer discovered 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 397 

that the secret of the universe lies in persistence of en- 
ergy ; no less does the secret of individual success. This 
persistence of energy characterizes Mr. Damrosch. If he 
undertakes anything he achieves it. It may be the im- 
possible — but it is conquered all the same. Ways and 
means are to him a mere detail. He was born to arrive. 
On a night still within the memory of Boston opera- 
goers when " Lohengrin " was to be presented and 
the Boston Theatre was resplendent with an audience 
that thronged its interior even to standing room, 
there was an inexplicable delay. Finally, it was 
rumored that the hero of the evening had been sud- 
denly taken ill, and a substitute was being sought. 
The great Alvary, regarding himself as free that night, 
had chosen the evening for a pedestrian excursion in 
regions where his discovery was hopeless. Four 
thousand people were awaiting — not too patiently — 
the Knight of the Holy Grail, when Mr. Damrosch, 
with the inspiration of his temperament, dashed in a 
cab to the Castle Square Theatre, procured at great 
financial sacrifice a singer who had familiarized himself 
with the role, and the performance was saved. It was 
entirely characteristic of Mr. Damrosch's daily experi- 
ences. He expects the impossible and finds it. He is 
not a conjurer or magician (thougli the results often 
seem to indicate a species of magic), but he uses, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, as may be, this intense 
quality of psychic energy which creates its own results. 
It is a potency that has its right of way all through 
the universe. 



398 BOSTON DAYS 

On another memorable night of a Damrosch opera 
season, the house was resplendent with beauty, fashion, 
and fame. It was thronged from orchestra to upper 
gallery by one of those critical and notable audiences 
that the Wagner opera always draws in musical Boston. 
The curtain rolled up on the stage scene of " Tristan 
and Isolde," and a strong cast, with Paul Kalisch and 
that great artist, Lilli Lehmann, in the title roles ; with 
Riza Ebenschuetz, a new singer, as Brangene, and 
that signal public favorite, Eniil Fischer, as King Mark. 
Mr. Damrosch looked up with that swift, electric 
glance of his which seems to reveal the perfect rapport 
that exists between himself and the singers on the 
stage as well as between him and his orchestra, and 
the great music-drama began. 

]\Ime. Lilli Lehmann did not need to add the charm 
of novelty to her other attractions, but as it had been 
seven years since she was last seen here there was, to 
some extent, a new public for her, — a new audience, 
who came to see and hear, and who departed conquered, 
as she has always conquered her audiences. She is a 
remarkable artist, perhaps the greatest in German opera 
of any one now living. She has the traditional colossal 
figure of Wagner's heroines, but her art is so all- 
prevailing that one accepts her Isolde as the ideal one 
and asks not that the impassioned princess should be 
more youthful and slender. 

Such presentations of Wagner's music-dramas are 
not merely nor even mostly an amusement. They afford 
the most exceptional opportunity for a serious study of 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 399 

the latest school of musical art. It does not seem 
necessary to pave the path of glory for Wagner with 
the slain Italian and French composers. One star 
differeth from another in its glory, but to extinguish all 
save one vrould be to efface the constellation. 

Richard Wagner had a mind that seized, as by intui- 
tion, on a poetic or a pictorial idea, and then used it 
as the nucleus from which imaginative creation pro- 
ceeded. In his earliest childhood he revealed his 
creative tendency. " At the age of five, instead of 
learning to draw eyes, he began painting life-size 
portraits of kings ; at thirteen he began translating 
Homer's Odyssey, and accomplished half of it." As a 
youth he wrote to a friend that he had no objection to 
being attacked for musical theories. " I bring no 
reconciliation to worthlessness,"' he said, " but war 
to the knife." Like most prophets, he was stoned 
metaphorically ; like all poets and artists, he ex- 
perienced the deep truth in the lines : — 

" Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 

Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours 
Weeping upon his bed he sate ; 

He knows ye not, ye Heavenly Powers." 

Of the production of " Tristan and Isolde," that im- 
passioned tragedy of love and death, what words can 
ever picture one especial performance given of it under 
Mr. Damrosch with Klafsky and Alvary in the title 
roles and Marie Brema as "Brangene." Herr Alvary 
was as unsurpassed as a great tenor and a dramatic 
actor could well be ; but it was in the new revelation 



400 BOSTON DAYS 



of the lyric and dramatic possibilities of the character 
of Isolde, made by Katherine Klafsky, that a higher 
note was struck in the lyric drama, and qualities un- 
dreamed of were revealed. Madame Klafsky — whose 
early death was a signal loss to lyric art — had that 
indescribable magnetism and power of a great artist 
who creates new ideals of an exacting role. On the 
day preceding this great triumphal occasion, she had 
kept herself in silence and seclusion in her rooms in 
the Hotel Brunswick, gathering as it were her forces 
from the atmosphere. Of all great operatic roles that 
of Isolde is perhaps the most exacting in its demand on 
both lyric and dramatic art. In JNIadame Klafsky this 
rare combination of twofold power existed. Her poses 
recalled those of Rachel, of whom her friends said, 
"EUe pose toujours." Never was a crowded house 
more entirely beside itself in enthusiasm than in the 
storm of ovation that spent itself on this superb, im- 
passioned Isolde in her white and gold robes in the 
pictorial scenes of this opera. 

" Tristan and Isolde " with Lilli Lehmann as the 
heroine lingers in memory. The curtain rises: Isolde 
is seen at the left of the stage, w^ith bowed head con- 
cealed in her arms. The very pose tells its own story. 
It is the abandon of grief and despair. JNIadame 
Lehmann strikes the note of tragedy in a high key and 
holds it firmly all through. This Isolde is, indeed, 
worth daring and dying for ; this intense, impassioned 
being, all color and flame and energy, whose potent 
will must transform for her the entire world. Every 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 401 

glance and gesture is instinct with this electric energy, 
this indefinable and all-potent magnetism. It sweeps 
one on, irresistibly, into the very heart of the tragedy. 
Studying Madame Lehmann's conception of the charac- 
ter on this occasion, when all the world about faded 
away and one only lived in the impassioned art of 
the great singer, it almost seemed as if her face and 
figure accorded better, perhaps, with the character than 
would more slender and girlish grace. For here was 
no coy maiden, shrinking even from the lover she 
adored, but a woman and a princess, royal by both 
rights, demanding that love should be all in all, whether 
for life or for death. In the garden scene Madame Leh- 
mann infused far more of the electric intensity and less 
of the languorous yielding than any Isolde save Madame 
Klafsky. The exalt4 note was held from first to last. 

And a night of " Tannhauser " — that drama of love 
and death ! Wagner tells a friend that he wrote this 
opera " with such consuming ardor " that the nearer he 
approached the end the more he was haunted by the 
idea that sudden death would prevent him from com- 
pleting it. " It acted on me like real magic," he said. 
" Whenever and wherever I took up my theme I 
was all aglow and trembling with excitement." 
" Tannhauser " and the vocal contest is a legend of 
the thirteenth century. The title role, as taken by 
Herr Rothmuhl; Elizabetli, as impersonated by Frau 
Gadski, off'er pictures to remember for a lifetime. 
Elizabeth, white-robed, with falling hair, kneeling in 
prayer at the wayside shrine ; Tannhauser, returning 

26 



402 BOSTON DAYS 



in sorrow from his pilgrimage to Rome ; Wolfram, 
singing his song to the evening star ; Venus and her 
nymphs in the grotto ; the chorus of monks chanting the 
funeral dirge of Elizabeth whose dead body is borne 
on a bier ; the funeral procession with the landgrave, 
the knight, the singers, the pilgrims, and the Pope's 
staff covered with fresh green, — evidence of Tann- 
hauser's salvation because a maiden loved him and 
died for him, and thus wrought the miracle, — how 
impressive it was in its solemn beauty. 

It is with especial pride that Boston always welcomes 
Madame Lillian Nordica. It is a far cry, measured by 
achievement rather than years, from the charming 
Boston girl, Lillian Norton, who went to Paris with 
her wonderful voice and her own simple sweetness and 
energy of purpose, to the great prima donna, Madame 
Nordica. Into these years she has concentrated work, 
and in them she has achieved a phenomenal develop- 
ment. But the secret of it lies not only in gifts, but in 
grace. 

Lillian Nordica is a woman of the most beautiful 
temperament in the world. She is sweet, sunny, 
serene. She is generous and loving and noble in every 
thought and purpose. She never misses an opportunity 
to say the kind and encouraging word, to do the help- 
ful act, to diffuse sunny stimulus about her. And this 
force of character has, one must needs believe, as 
much to do with her phenomenal success as her genius 
and her untiring study. An audience feels the force 
of all this sweet and noble and harmonious character 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 403 

whenever she appears on the stage. It may not be 
analyzed or even consciously recognized, but all the 
same it makes its impress. It is a force of immeasu- 
rable aid and all her associate artists are helped by her 
gladness in their success. A '* Nordica night " is a 
red-letter night in the opera season. 

Always a student is Madame Nordica. It is not 
surprising that she has achieved so brilliant a triumph 
at Beireuth, and in all the leading cities, in the Wagner 
music which she interprets with such marvellous art 
and impassioned devotion. 

The presentation of Mr. Damrosch's own opera, 
" The Scarlet Letter," founded on Hawthorne's im- 
mortal romance, the libretto by George Parsons 
Lathrop, the son-in-law of Hawthorne, and the music 
by Mr. Damrosch himself, was a memorable event in 
Boston ; and the theatre was crowded with the beauty 
and genius, fashion and fame, learning and loveliness 
of Boston and Cambridge. 

The performance had an inevitable intensity of in- 
terest due to the fact that the scene of Hawthorne's 
greatest romance was laid in this city ; that his 
name is one to conjure with ; that the scenery was 
that which should bid the dead past rise, as if touched 
by an enchanter's wand, and reveal the Boston of two 
hundred and fifty years ago. The entire action of 
the story of " The Scarlet Letter " takes place within 
a small district of Boston — lying between Cornhill 
and Temple Place, on the north and south, between 
Tremont Street and the harbor on the west and east. 



404 BOSTON DAYS 

The house of the " worshipful Governor Bellingham " 
stood ou the site now occupied by a dry-goods house 
on the corner of Beacon and Tremont streets ; the old 
jail, where Hawthorne pictured Hester as imprisoned, 
was on Cornhill ; the old market place down near the 
harbor. At that time (1636) there were two hundred 
and fifty inhabitants in Boston, the beautiful harbor 
was in sight from every house in the settlement, — 
certainly a vast scenic advantage over the present, — 
and the hut supposed to be occupied by Hester Prynne, 
on the edge of the forest, was on " the Neck," now in 
the heart of the city. 

It was a number of years ago when Mr. Damrosch 
first read the story of " The Scarlet Letter " that the 
idea of translating it into opera began to haunt his 
imagination. For Walter Damrosch is not merely a 
man of talent and the finest musical culture ; but he is 
a great original genius ; his mind is of that imaginative 
and exquisitely touched quality which renders him 
capable of vast creative achievements, and in Mr. 
Damrosch there is one of the most marked and im- 
pressive characters that the world has seen during the 
past three centuries. 

" Spirits are not finely touched 
But to fine issues." 

The spirit of Walter Damrosch is indeed of that order 
of the " finely touched," the divinely commissioned. 

" Gradually," says Mr. Damrosch, in speaking the 
first stirring intimations of his work, " gradually, while 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 405 

reading the story, I began to divide it into acts ; and 
as I read and reread Hawthorne's great creation, 
musical themes suggested themselves to me. But I 
could do nothing definite, as I looked in vain for a poet 
sufficiently sympathetic to collaborate with the require- 
ments of music." 

" The Scarlet Letter " did not score a popular success 
as an opera, yet its production in Hawthorne's city was 
an event of no little interest. The scenes of the dress- 
rehearsal linger in the memory of those present. The 
great auditorium of the Boston Theatre was but fitfully 
lighted with chance gleams from the stage. The high 
tiers of boxes looked ghostly and wraithlike in their 
white linen shroudings, that fell from the ceiling to the 
floor. The great musical critics from Philadelphia and 
New York and Boston were all present, with a sprinkling 
of press-correspondents, and a few friends, especially 
invited. The little audience of the most intensely inter- 
ested people bestowed themselves here and there with 
subdued whisperings and a thrill of expectancy. The 
scene that met their eyes was truly edifying. The 
background of the first scene in the opera is a view of 
the blue waters and sailing craft of Boston Harbor, 
but the sea was hanging midway in the air, and the 
dislocated ships seemed about to be precipitated upon 
the fair head of Madame Gadski. The pillory on which 
Hester was to stand was placed tentatively on the stage, 
and the rosebush that blossomed by the old market 
place lopped sadly on one side. 

However, the sea was soon pulled down by cords 



406 BOSTON DAYS 



into its appropriate place, where the blue waters met 
the eye in their accustomed relations of space ; the 
rosebush was restored to its original intention ; the 
pretty figure of Johanna Gadski was no longer in dan- 
ger from the ships in the air, and Mr. Damrosch grasped 
the baton, which in his hands is a magician's wand. 
There is a beautiful experiment in physics where, when 
a note in music is struck, the particles of sand on a tray 
arrange themselves in crystals. One is always reminded 
of this when Mr. Damrosch ascends the conductor's 
stand and grasps the baton. Instantly life begins. 
Everything falls into order. 

To see him conduct a rehearsal was a new experience. 
If a singer was out of tune Mr. Damrosch could sing 
the bar and restore the key; if a player failed, on 
whatever instrument, the conductor could put him right 
again. In the acting, the orchestration, the singing, — 
there was no phase of operatic art that he could not 
personally direct with the unanswerable authority that 
comes of absolute mastery of every branch of the work. 
For three consecutive times the chorus would be sent 
trooping back to make their entrance again ; to his 
orchestra Mr. Damrosch spoke entirely in German, as 
few of them understood English. 

The premiere came ; the curtain went up on the first 
scene with the harbor in its rightful place rather than 
hanging in the air, and the rosebush growing according 
to the due laws of nature. Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, 
with his guest, Prince Wolkonsky, President Eliot, 
Mrs. Leopold Damrosch, Clayton Johns, Mrs. Julia 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 407 

Ward Howc, and Madame Melba were among those in 
the audience. 

The story of " The Scarlet Letter " was represented 
in three acts, in which, from beginning to end, there 
was not a dull moment, — not a moment, indeed, that is 
not intense in interest. The child Pearl is supposed to 
have died in prison. This point is told in the words of 
Rev. John Wilson to Hester : — 

" Hester Prynne, hearken ! 
Thy husband absent 
Far beyond the sea, 
A child to thee was born, 
Bringing disgrace and scorn. 
Heaven's wise decree 
Hath taken thy daughter away, 
Wafted on wings of death." 

Then the venerable minister implored his young col- 
league, Arthur Dimmesdale, to strive with Hester, and 
as the partner of her guilt is about to speak, the terrible 
sarcasm of the chorus wafts tliese words regarding 
Dimmesdale : — 

'' wise and childlike, 
Simple and pure, 
With words of an angel he speaks." 

Then come the words of Arthur to Hester : 



" If peace to thee it would give. 
And thy spirit make whole 
Or hope of salvation insure, 
Tell his name who with thee now suffers, 
Though hiding his guilty heart. 
High or low, spare him not from the ban. 



408 BOSTON DAYS 



Remember, he is not exemjDted 

From the doom that shadows thee. 

Think ere thou repliest, 

For if the truth thou deniest, 

Oh, Hester, Hester ! 

His soul with thine condemned may be." 

Again, the terrible mockery of the chorus is heard 



" Too sharp the stress 
Of grief that he feels for the wanton's woe." 

And Arthur : — 

"Ay, tell them who tempted thee." 

And Hester, in a voice of the saddest sweetness : — 

" From me the world shall never know his name." 

The terrible Roger Chillingworth then shouts from 
the crowd : — 

"Ay, woman, speak," 



Hester recognizes his voice, and, in startled agitation 
sings : — 

" Ha, that voice ! 
No ! No ! Thrice no to thee ! My child hath found 
A heavenly father. Ye shall never know his earthly one." 

The first scene is one of the most beautiful in scenic 
perfection. Irving himself, that master of stage art, 
never devised a more beautiful pictorial effect. In the 
forest (as told in the romance) Hester and Arthur meet, 
and he says : — 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 409 

" Ah, better, far better, 
To wear that raiment 



Woe unto me ! 
My letter in secret still cloth burn 
With a pain that never and never dies. 

I hear the accusing voice ; 
* Thou, consecrate and placed 
O'er men to teach them purity, 
False art thou to thy trust I ' 

Had I one friend 

Or a foe — the worst — 

To whom I might bend 

Each day and be known as a sinner vile, 

E'en so much of truth might reconcile. 

My soul to life. ..." 

Then Hester : — 

" Such a friend thou hast, 
Behold, in me. 

O'er the bitter present, the vanished past. 
Of thy sin and mine 
To weep with thee." 

The orchestration is Wagnerian in that it has all that 
fulness and richness of the master, after whom, indeed, 
all else seems as water after wine, and as moonlight 
after sunlight. Walter Damrosch is far more than a 
disciple of Wagner. His genius is of the same immortal 
type. 

As the curtain fell the picture was memorable. The 
stage was set with the forest scene, — a wild, deep glade, 
when a glow of sunshine fell in the middle distance, 



410 BOSTON DAYS 



and mossy rocks and a fallen tree and exquisite group- 
ing and glancing lights gave the background to the 
slight, youthful, scliolarly-looking artist as he responded 
to the enthusiasm and stood before the footlights. Mrs. 
Leopold Damrosch (the mother of the artist), in a black 
gown with diamonds and sapphires at her throat, looked 
down from her box on the scene of four thousand people 
applauding her son. The orchestra waited, instruments 
in hand, looking proudly on their leader. Fraulein 
Gadski, in her amethyst and white robes, her fair 
hair flowing to her waist, Herr Berthold, the Arthur 
Dimmesdale of the cast, Herr Mertens, whose Roger 
Chilliugworth will rank as one of the great impersona- 
tions of the lyric stage, — all stood grouped about. 

Mr. Damrosch's speech was very simple and adequate, 
expressing the debt of gratitude due first of all to Haw- 
thorne ; then to his talented son-in-law, George Parsons 
Lathrop, who had composed the libretto, and to his 
singers and liis fellow-artists, the orchestra. 

At the close Mr. Damrosch was'presented with laurel 
wreaths enough to decorate all the crowned lieads of 
Europe or the great masters of music, and at the end 
of the opera more laurel wreaths and a silver vase filled 
with American Beauty roses. 

The death of the poet Whittier in September of 1892 
came on a morning that dawned in a splendor of rose 
and pearl and gold ; and it seemed a fitting hour for 
the soul of our saintliest poet to be set free from its 
earthly tabernacle to live wholly in that spiritual world 
which his eye had seen, and his heart conceived, and 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 411 

his pen portrayed during his long and beautiful life. 
There was something significant — something one loves 
to dwell upon — in Mr. Whittier's going forth from 
the earthly to heavenly in this earliest hint of dawn. 
It was not yet sunrise, but the world was flooded with 
light, — so pure, so beautiful, so quivering with faint, 
opalescent gleams of the dawn, that it was a wonder- 
world — a miracle world. One looked out upon it 
and thought of Paradise Gloria. It must remain a 
picture enshrined in memory, — that morning when, 
with the earliest dawn, the poet Whittier put off" the 
mortal and put on immortality. One could not but 
think of the expression of being "clothed with light as 
with a garment, " of being " clothed with glory," so 
fair in its hush of dawning splendor were the early 
hours of that day, so beautiful was the scene, in the 
glory of sea and of sky, on which his soul went forth. 
Who may tell us what dawned upon his spiritual 
vision ? " It is beautiful," Mrs. Browning said in her 
last moment as she went. If ever the heavenly vision 
shone around a life it attended that of John Greenleaf 
Whittier. The entire world has been left 

" the better for his being 

And gladder for his human speech." 

Mr. Whittier never journeyed far from his native New 
England, yet his life could in no sense be called a nar- 
row one, for sympathy and imagination are wings, and 
with their magic, though one may not go to all the world, 
all the world comes to him. Without that which we 



412 BOSTON DAYS 



are accustomed to call the culture of art, society, and 
travel ; without a university education, or any of the 
more obvious channels, he was yet largely in touch 
with the world. He did not grasp it through the 
appointed means, but all the same he possessed its best 
results. The winged nature need not tread every step 
of the path ; it can fly. 

The world in which Mr. Whittier lived transcended 
even the best that this world can offer, and still those 
who think of him as in any sense dreamy, unpractical, 
and impracticable, would fail to grasp his character. 
He was intensely practical, but he was not material. 
There is a difference. His life dealt with actualities. 
He had the manly, vigorous fibre of New England, and 
the prominent and active part he took in all the aboli- 
tion movements and antislavery work proved him no 
formless dreamer. It is the idealist who is most truly 
practical, or at least practicable ; it is he who lives in 
spiritual realities who most truly lives. Mr. Whittier 
was no stranger to manly indignation at corruption and 
wrong, though he was meek and lowly of heart. His 
was not a nature to ever allow itself to be " melted 
down for the benefit of the tallow trade." That is not 
the New England fibre. He was a poet. He was 
dowered with the poet's 

" Hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." 

He not only had the vision, but the practical cast of 
thought to apply his ideals as tests of life — to raise all 
life to a purer plane. He was a fervent patriot, and 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 413 

was always deeply interested in national and inter- 
national politics, in affairs at large, in events, and in 
movements. The reformer and the idealist, in the best 
sense of each, are always united. 

If Mr. Whittier's life were to be summed up in the 
significance of one word, that word would be influence. 
Wendell Phillips was pre-eminently the agitator, Mr. 
Whittier as pre-eminently the influencer if one may coin 
the word. It is the singer 

" Who lives forever, 
While the toiler dies in a day," 

and Mr. Whittier's life would quite fulfil the tradi- 
tional power over a nation held by one who writes its 
songs rather than by one who makes its laws. 

Whittier was a prolific letter-writer, and while he 
had not the classic polish of Longfellow or the wit of 
Holmes, his letters are full of quaint humor, of tender 
and noble feeling, of charm of allusion that make them 
pleasant reading. In 1888 he writes to Mrs. James T. 
Fields in reply to her tidings that she was convalesc- 
ing from an illness, and that Lowell was reading to 
her. In reply to this Whittier says : " Sitting by the 
peat fire listening to Lowell's reading of his own 
verses ! A convalescent princess with her minstrel in 
attendance." 

To Dr. Holmes, under date of Nov. 9, 1891, he writes: 

" Dear Holmes, — The last and noblest word has been 
spoken by thy lines on Lowell. As a work of artistic 
beauty and fitness it has no equal in our literature. It 



414 BOSTON DAYS 



will last as long as his Ode on Lincoln, and that is saying 
much. Thanks to our heavenly Father that he has been 
given the power to write it." 

Letters to Lydia Maria Child, to Lowell, Whipple, 
Holmes, Longfellow, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and all 
the familiar Boston circle of letters offer much of in- 
terest and insight into the literary life of the city 
between 1840-90. 

A characteristic letter of Whittier's to Whipple is as 
follows : 

Oak Knoll, Dan vers, Nov. 25, 1880. 

My Dear Whipple, — I am always glad to hear from 
thee and I gave thy letter a hearty welcome. I hope 
when the summer comes that thou and Mrs. Whipple will 
run out here and see me, for I am admonished by many 
tokens that the time is short, and that I must make the 
most of the present time and the friends who are left me. 

I would be happy to meet the wonderful violinist at 
thy house. If I am able — just now I am suffering too 
much with my head and eyes to listen even with any 
satisfaction to the harp of Orpheus — I will try to arrange 
it. I am greatly obliged to him for thinking of me and 
volunteering to play for me. 

I missed thee at the Holmes breakfast. It was a nice 
tri])ute. I was only able to stay an hour or so. 

Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Whipple, and believe 
me always most truly thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

Among American poets that universal recognition 
which, for want of a better term, we call popularity, 
would lie between Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 415 

It is, perhaps, true that the Quaker poet exerted a 
direct moral influence over his country that has never 
in any age or any country been equalled. He was as 
potent in the realm of spirituality as Goethe was in 
that of intellect. Until we view his remarkable influ- 
ence in its wholeness its totally unrivalled character 
could not be adequately appreciated, yet this power of 
influence when analyzed presents anomalies. Mr. Whit- 
tier was devoid of collegiate culture ; he grew up in the 
scenery of provincial, of rustic life ; he did not draw 
from the sources of travel, of contact with great men 
or great literatures, — all this cosmopolitan culture of 
travel, art, society, was outside his life; and still he 
was not provincial ; his interests were as wide as the 
world of events and of humanity. Probably no one 
of the greater poets have ever owed so little to what 
we ordinarily term sources of culture as Mr. Whittier, 
and the reason lies in the simple fact that he drew 
strength and vision directly from the spiritual world, 
which to him was ever present and real. 



he wrote 



" Ah, I have friends in spirit land," 



" Not shadows, in a shadowy band. 
Not others, but themselves are they." 



And again the poet would have us 

— " stretch our hands in darkness 

And call our loved ones o'er and o'er ; 

Some day their arms shall close about us 
And the old voices speak once more." 



416 BOSTON DAYS 



His vision of the invisible world is always clear, 
simple, and direct. It was the world in which he 
lived, although this manly, vigorous, earnest nature 
was no cloistered and ascetic saint ; he was a re- 
former, a man with ever-active interest in politics, 
with ever-present sympathy in all the movements that 
make for progress. After the heroic days of the 
Antislavery Crusade, his active sympathies were with 
temperance, with labor reform, with the higher educa- 
tion and political enfranchisement of women, with all 
the forces that are evolving the higher issues of hu- 
manity. His life has stood for all that is most typically 
noble in American manhood. 

As a poet, he combines the rarest excellences. To 
flexible and musical form, to the spontaneous lyric gift, 
he has added the vigorous and noble outlook in life, 
the tenderly helpful and uplifting spiritual vision. It 
is more than an open question whether all the sermons 
of this century have done so much to spiritualize life 
as have Whittier's "Our Master" and "The Eternal 
Goodness." 

Mr. Stedman, in an estimate of Mr. Whittier as one 
" who left to silence his personal experience," and who, 
" like a celibate priest, was the consoler of the hearts 
of others and the keeper of his own," adds : 

"His traits, moreover, have begotten a sentiment of 
public affection which, from its constant manifestation, 
is not to be overlooked in any judgment of bis career. 
In recognition of a beautiful character, critics have not 
found it needful to measure the native bard with tape 



DAWN OF THE T^^ENTIETH CENTURY 417 

and calipers, ilis ser\'ice and the spirit of it offset the 
blemishes which it is their wont to condemn in poets 
whose exploits are merely technical. A life is on his 
written page ; these are the chants of a soldier, and anon 
the liymnal of a saint. Contemporary honor is not the 
tiuai test, but it has its proper bearing, — as in the case 
of Mrs. Browning, whom I have called the most beloved 
of English poets." 

Whittier's audience has been won by unaffected pic- 
tures of the scenes to which he was bred, by the purity 
of his nature, and even more by the earnestness audible 
in his songs, injurious as it sometimes is to their ar- 
tistic purpose. Like the English sibyl, he has obeyed 
the heavenly vision, and the verse of poets who still 
trust their inspiration has its material, as well as spirit- 
ual, ebb and flow. 

It must be owned that Goethe's calm distinction 
between the poetry of humanity and poetry of a high 
ideal is fully illustrated in Wliittier's reform verse. 
Yet even his failings have " leaned to virtue's side." 
Those who gained strength from his music to en- 
dure defeat and obloquy cherish him with a devotion 
beyond measure. For his righteous and tender heart 
they would draw him with their own hands, over 
paths strewed with lilies, to a shrine of peace and 
remembrance. 

One of the {ileasant social occasions in the life of 
Mr. Whittier was a reception given for him by ex- 
Govemor and Mrs William Claflin at their spacious 
home in Mt. Vernon Street. This was almost or quite 

27 



418 BOSTON DAYS 



the last meeting of many of the old antislavery work- 
ers ; and beside the guest of honor, Mr. Whittier, there 
were present Rev. Samuel J. May, Dr. Henry B. Black- 
well and Mrs. Lucy Stone, Miss Anne Whitney, Mrs. 
Abby Morton Diaz, Mrs. Cheney, Mrs. Howe, Mr. 
Frank B. Sanborn, and others. 

After nearly all the guests had gone, Mrs. Claflin, 
with IMr. Whittier at her side, Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz, 
and a few others, were seated at the informal tea-table. 
Mrs. Claflin turned to Mr. Whittier and said, playfnlly, 
in allusion to a remark he had made (with his char- 
acteristic modesty, that these people she had invited 
would not come merely to meet him, or something to 
that effect) : " Mr. Whittier, you see they did come." 
" Ah, but every one would be glad to come to see 
thee," he rejoined, with graceful chivalry. 

Hon. William Claflin served two or three terms as 
governor of the Commonwealth and held a worthy 
place among a long line of famous men from "the 
worshipful Governor Bradford" to the present execu- 
tive. Governor Crane, — a line including the great 
war-governor, John A, Andrew, and the well-beloved 
Roger Wolcott. Mrs. Claflin, whose death in 1896 
left vacant a place in social and philanthropic inter- 
ests, was a graceful hostess who made a fine art of 
entertaining. INIr. and Mrs. Claflin were of that typi- 
cal New England quality which our country recognizes 
as its best citizenship, whether it be found in Maine or 
Texas. 

They began their married life with scanty means, and 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 419 

lived in a simple way, near Framingham, rich only in 
love and happiness. By his own integrity and good 
management Mr, Clafliu amassed a large fortune, and 
they established a beautiful home in Newton, calling 
their estate " The Old Elms." They also had a town 
house, which still remains one of the most pleasant of 
the spacious old mansions of an earlier day. Their 
houses became the scenes of the most charming hospi- 
tality. Mr. Whittier was deeply attached to them, and 
always made his home with the Claflins when in Boston. 
Mrs. Stowe was a frequent guest, as were also Henry 
Ward Beecher, Charles Sumner, Hon. Salmon P. Chase, 
Longfellow, Dr. Holmes, ex-President and Mrs. Hayes, 
Miss Edna Dean Proctor, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and 
a host of others. It was at their country house, " The 
Old Elms," that the seventieth birthday of Mrs. Stowe 
was celebrated by one of the most brilliant literary com- 
panies ever assembled. Among those present were 
Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Holmes, Mr. Trowbridge, 
Colonel Higginson, Miss Phelps (now Mrs. Ward), 
Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, Mr. Ho wells, and Mr. Aldrich. 
It was on that occasion that Mrs. Stowe remarked, as 
she stood on the raised dais to respond to all the felici- 
tations offered her : " My friends, always believe this : 
Everything that ought to happen is always going to 
happen." 

Mr. Claflin has known many notable men and brings 
them vividly before the listener when speaking of 
them. The long life of more than eighty years 
which the ex-governor has seen has included the 



420 BOSTON DAYS 



most eventful period of the century, and almost, per- 
haps, of the world's history. The Boston of 1818 and 
the Boston of the Twentieth century have little in com- 
mon with each other ; and he has seen the introduction 
of railroads, the invention of the steamships and of the 
telegraph, the progress of the Civil War, the accession 
of Queen Victoria and Edward VII. to the throne, the 
exploration and civilization of all the country west of 
the Mississippi River, the overthrow of slavery, to say 
nothing of all the later great electric inventions and 
the changes in politics and society. If the ex-governor 
were to write his memoirs they would be deeply inter- 
esting. There are few of the famous folk, of our own 
country or of visiting foreigners, statesmen, authors, 
artists, actors, reformers, inventors, or great scholars, 
who have not been entertained by Governor and Mrs. 
Claflin. 

Any remembrance of Mr. Whittier recalls vividly his 
lifelong friend and co-worker, Lydia Maria Child, to 
whom lie refers as 

" The worthiest of our narrowing circle," 

in a poem addressed to her on reading her lines on 
Ellis Gray Loring, published in a journal of the time. 
This is one of INIr. Whittier's sweetest lyrics. The 
opening stanzas run : — 

" The sweet spring day is glad with music, 
But through it sounds a sadder strain ; 
The worthiest of our narrowing circle 
Sings Loring's dirges o'er aijaiu. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 421 

" O woman greatly loved ! I join thee 
In tender memories of our friend ; 
With thee across the awful spaces 
The greeting of a soul I send ! 

" What cheer hath he 1 How is it with him ? 
Where lingers he this weary while ? 
Over what pleasant fields of Heaven 
Dawns the sweet sunrise of his smile ? " 

After her death (on Oct. 20, 1880) he wrote of 
her a memorial poem, entitled " Within the Gate," in 
wliich occur the lines : — 

" Not for brief days thy generous sympathies, 
Thy scorn of selfish ease ; 
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal 
Thy strong uplift of soul." 

There is a rhythmic completeness in the life of Mr. 
Whittier that appeals to the imagination, and it is for- 
ever beautiful to remember that the last work of his 
hand was the birthday poem to Dr. Holmes, just nine 
days before his death, the poem closing with these 
lines : — 

" The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and late. 
When at the Eternal Gate, 
We leave the words and works we call our own 
And lift void hands alone 

" For love to fill. Our nakedness of soul 
Brings to that Gate no toll ; 
Giftless we come to Him, who all things gives, 
And live because He lives." 

Among Mrs. Claflin's guests on this occasion of her 
reception for Mr. Whittier, ]\Irs. Diaz was a very inter- 



422 BOSTON DAYS 



esting figure. A native of Plymouth and one who 
entered on literary life by the most approved strait gate, 
if not the narrow way, of the " Atlantic Monthly," her 
work broadened into something that came to include 
literature rather than to be exclusively absorbed in it. 
Her early stories that appeared in the "Atlantic 
Monthly " have been followed by the " William Henry 
Letters," " Bybury to Beacon Street," " Domestic Prob- 
lems," and " The John Spicer Letters," and a number 
of stories and sketches contributed to various periodi- 
cals have won for her wide literary fame. Yet far 
beyond any conceivable prestige of fame in literary pro- 
duction, is the simple, direct, sympathetic, and sparkling 
presence of Mrs. Diaz. She might have been an artist, 
a danseuse, a stage manager, a singer, quite as well as a 
writer, a lecturer, an organizer of philanthropic and 
economic work, and the mistress of a home whose 
atmosphere is all sunshine. It is related that Prof. 
Charles Eliot Norton was so charmed with the spirit of 
the " William Henry Letters " that he inquired as to 
the identity of the author, and soon after secured her 
aid in educating his own children. 

The opening of the new Public Library in Copley 
Square was an epoch-making event in the nineties, — 
an event the more significant in the installation of so 
remarkable a librarian as Mr. Herbert Putnam, who, 
on his resignation to accept the office of Librarian of 
the Congressional Library, was succeeded by the 
present able and learned man who administers it 
so wisely, — James W. Whitney, LL.D. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 423 

Mr. Whitney shares Mr. Putnam's ideal in conceiving 
of his office as an active and not as a passive one. The 
true work of a public library is not merely to offer — 
however freely and easily — supplies to those who ask, 
to meet the demands that are made ; but, beyond this, 
to increase the number who will ask ; to constantly 
extend and multiply the demands. This is a new de- 
parture in the conduct of great libraries. Mr. Whitney 
is accessible personally ; he does away with all use- 
less rubbish of red tape ; he has the people's interest 
thoroughly at heart ; he discriminates swiftly and clearly 
between the essential and the non-essential. 

The mural art of the Library, representing the im- 
mortal work of Puvis de Chavannes, John S. Sargent, 
and Edwin A. Abbey, with one ceiling of unique beauty 
by John Elliott, is among the finest in the modern wrld. 
These paintings rival in interest the art in the galleries 
of the Museum of Fine Arts. The stately and noble 
reading-rooms — Bates Hall, the periodical-room, the 
newspaper-room, the fine-arts room, and other depart- 
ments and specialties ; the active hospitality of the 
Library, its beauty, glow, and charm, are simply mag- 
netic. Too much could hardly be said of the unweary- 
ing courtesy, the helpful kindness of Mr. Bierstadt, the 
Curator of Bates Hall, and of the heads of the other 
departments in the delivery-room, the periodical and the 
newspaper rooms. The atmosphere of the most gener- 
ous helpfulness and gracious courtesy is simply ideal, and 
it renders the Library that which every town and city 
library should be, — an educational centre, using the 



424 BOSTON DAYS 



term in the larger sense of liberal culture as well as of 
education alone. Yet with every recognition of the 
very rare quality of Mr. Whitney's staff, in their various 
responsible positions ; — with every recognition of the 
spacious, stately, splendid building — a dream of beauty 
without and within — one must come back to the centre 
of it all, to him whose fine, firm touch upon the main- 
spring holds its elaborate mechanism true to its course, 
the Librarian. The splendid building, with all its treas- 
ures of literature and art, might almost relapse into a 
mere literary mausoleum were it not for the spirit that 
informs it with life and light and irresistible energy. 

The opening of the Library on Sunday afternoons, and 
the extension of the evening hours from the former 
closing hour of nine until ten o'clock, the present 
hour, is an incalculable blessing to those whose occupa- 
tions hold them closely all day. The number of persons 
visiting the Library on Sunday afternoons is usually 
large ; and not unfrequently Bates Hall is crowded 
with eager readers at every table. 

Fortunate in its magnificent site on Copley Square ; 
facing the Museum of Fine Arts, Trinity Church, and 
the Brunswicl^; fortunate in its arcliitects, its artists, 
and its great corps of assistants, the library is most of 
all fortunate in the wise administrative policy that con- 
ducts the institution. The basic principle appears to 
be the conviction that the Library is made for the 
people, and not the people for the Library. The first 
effort is to afford the largest number of people the larg- 
est possible facilities for reading, study, and culture. 




o 
•^ 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 425 

To have such a centre for students and literary 
workers as the Public Library has made itself in Boston 
is a liberal education in larger social sympathies. The 
architecture has been adversely criticised on account 
of the distance of the book-stacks from the reading- 
rooms. The building has a large central court in 
which a fountain throws out its perpetual spray over 
the verdant grass, and the four sides of which are sur- 
rounded by a colonnade where, in time, will be busts 
and statues of the immortals. The book-stacks occupy 
the entire west end of the building ; but the distance is 
practically annihilated by a pneumatic tube and electric 
railway. The entire time between making out the slip 
and receiving the book is often within four minutes, so 
that when distance can thus be annihilated by modern 
conveniences it is not objectionable. In the British 
Museum the time required for procuring books is so 
great that a busy worker usually sends for those he re- 
quires the day before he needs to use them, in order to 
have them at hand without wasting untold hours. 

The habitues of Bates Hall hold in affectionate 
remembrance the former curator, Mr. Arthur Mason 
Knapp, who, for more than twenty years, had literally 
radiated sweetness and light to every one who came 
within the sphere of his work. Mr. Knapp's vast 
stores of knowledge, and his infinite patience and sym- 
pathetic kindness, were at the service of every one, and 
the value of his aid which he freely placed at the use of 
any one who asked was simply beyond computation. For 
the Public Library in Boston is not a mere building stored 



426 BOSTON DAYS 



with books and mechanical conveniences. It is a centre 
of life, of unselfish endeavor, of social sympathies, of 
mutual interests. 

Another centre which, like the Public Library, has 
radiated high influences throughout the entire commu- 
nity, is the Museum of Fine Arts, which was so fortunate 
as to have for its director, over a long number of years, 
that most accomplished and learned connoisseur of 
art, Gen. Charles A. Loring, whose death, in the 
summer of 1902, came as a profound personal and 
artistic loss to the entire community whose interests 
he had so faithfully and ably served with the most 
endearing courtesy and generous goodness, as well as 
by his wide culture and unerring judgment of both 
ancient and modern art. The Museum has been for- 
tunate in securing for his successor one of the most 
distinguished of living savants. Prof. Edward Robinson. 
The progress of art in Boston has been in an accelerated 
ratio during the last half of the Nineteenth century. 
Allston left his name written among the immortals. 
William Hunt, George Fuller, and Dr. Rimmer have 
title to imperishable fame. Of contemporary artists 
there is a constellation of genius. Elizabeth Peabody 
has recorded of Allston that "his every conversation 
had the beauty of a work of art, though it was always 
the unaffbcted and spontaneous outflow of a nature in 
w^hich no faculty had been left to grow rank, but all 
were cultivated harmoniously and faithfully." 

From the exhibition of Allston's paintings in 1839, 
which made so deep an impression upon Margaret 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 427 

Fuller, to the present time Boston has been hos- 
pitable, ardent, and finely appreciative of special col- 
lections. Allston, whom the Italians well called the 
" Titian of America," can be studied in the " Allston 
rooms " of the Museum of Fine Arts, where many of 
his sublimest works are exposed. In " Belchazzar's 
Feast," "The Dead Man Restored to Life," "The 
Witch of Endor," " Rosalie," and others, his art can be 
adequately studied. 

Miss Peabody used to say that intercourse with 
Allston was always of a singular freshness. 

" He was very retired in his habits," she continues, 
" and his hours of work, whether with the pencil or the 
pen, were always passed in absolute solitude; also his 
hours of lassitude or weariness. But when he came into 
the company of even his most intimate friends, he was in 
full presence. He always went round and shook hands 
with each, in delighted recognition, and whenever he 
parted, even with members of the family, and for the 
night, it was done with so much sensibility that it would 
do well for the last time." 

The great exposition of the works of John S. Sargent, 
given by the Copley Society, was a memorable event in 
art. One cannot study so representative a collection of 
Sargent's work without applying to him the lines of 
Emerson : — 

" Born and nourished in miracles, 
His feet were shod with golden bells. " 

Born in Florence, cradled in art, companioned with 
beauty from his infancy, steeped in the glorious im- 



428 BOSTON DAYS 



pressions of the great masters whose work made the 
golden atmosphere of his youth — in tliese portraits is 
seen the result of such an atmosphere. His portraits 
reveal a series of psychological impressions. One can- 
not but suspect him of entertaining private judgments 
of his own which it would not invariably be discreet to 
impart. In Sargent's earlier work there was, indeed, 
an occasional departure into absolute eccentricity — as 
when he painted a well-known society woman of Boston 
with a ring of light, a la St. Cecilia, around her head. 
Just what was intended by this, no one, so far as is 
currently known, has ever discovered. At all events 
that portrait did not figure in this collection, albeit its 
owner is a liberal patron of art. 

To the Sargent exhibition was added about the same 
time that of Boutct de Monvel, who is the most famous 
French artist of the day in the portraiture of children, 
and who, as an illustrator, has a dramatic quality of 
graphic depiction that renders his pictorial interpreta- 
tion almost as perfect a manner of telling a story as is 
literary narration. For instance, his series of illustrations 
from the life of Jeanne d'Arc. In thirty-eight pictures 
(in water-color) the entire story is told. The peasant 
girl at Domremy ; the girl standing hushed and awed 
before the vision of St. Michael that has risen before 
her, half-hidden in the shrubbery, which is all lighted 
up with the sudden glory; the girl listening in rapt, 
wondering ecstasy to "the voices;" the scenes sliow- 
ing Jeanne on the road ; her recognition of the King, 
who tested her by wearing a plainer costume than his 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 429 

courtiers ; her entrance into Orleans ; the taking of the 
Bastille ; the reception of Jeanne by the King after the 
victory ; Jeanne laying down her armor on the altar of 
St. Denis kneeling in the dim, historic interior ; the scene 
of her capture under the walls of Compi^gne ; her fall 
from the fortress of Beaurevoir in the effort to escape ; her 
imprisonment at Rouen ; the appearance to her of the 
saints in her cell at night, and the final scene of the 
burning of the Maid alive in the square at Rouen, — 
all these and other scenes are so vividly represented as 
to fairly suggest the story, even to one who had never 
heard of the most marvellous train of events in history. 
The St. Botolph Club have given in their galleries 
a series of important exhibitions, among which was that 
of works of Zorn, — not a large exhibition, some 
forty pictures in all ; not too large to study at leisure 
without bewilderment, and sufficiently extensive to 
offer a representative estimate of the ability of this 
remarkable artist. Mr. Sargent — who can well afford 
to be generous, and would be, whether he could afford 
it or not — asserts that Zorn is the greatest painter of 
modern times. Boston does not hold him so high as 
it does Mr. Sargent himself; but it must be felt that he 
has a kind of electric power, a verve, an instantaneous, 
creative ability, and a genius for handling light that is 
all peculiarly his own. His methods and those of Mr. 
Sargent are wholly different, and praise or appreciation 
of the one does not by any means detract from the 
other. The subjects of these portraits included some 
persons who are widely known, among whom was Prof. 



430 BOSTON DAYS 

Halsey G. Ives, director of the Museum of Fine Arts 
of St. Louis, and the man who so pre-eminently dis- 
tinguished himself as the head of the entire art depart- 
ment of the exposition in 1893 at Chicago. 

The exhibition of the work of Boutet de Monvel, of 
Raffaelli, of Marcious-Simonds, and others of late years, 
have contributed to the art education of the people. 

When the bronze tablet marking the grave of Edwin 
Booth in Mount Auburn was placed, a little group 
of his friends gathered there. His daughter Edwina 
(Mrs. Grossman), Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple, Prof. 
Charles Eliot Norton, INIrs. Howe, and others, and 
Mrs. Howe, reminded of the beautiful social life of the 
rare and vanished circle of the past, said, half dreamily, 
" Where are the philosophers ? Charlotte [turning to 
Mrs. Whipple], Charlotte, why don't you call the 
philosophers again ? " " My doors are always open to 
them," replied Mrs. Whipple. 

" The philosophers " have nearly all vanished beyond 
reach of the earthly summons, and yet the presence of 
Emerson, Fields, Whipple, Dr. Holmes, Longfellow, 
Edwin Booth, seems to pervade and even dominate Bos- 
ton to-day, however unconsciously. The New England 
type is very distinctive. A New Englander is a New 
Englander as a Greek is a Greek. The type is as 
absolutely its own in the United States as that of the 
French or the Austrian in Europe. However wide the 
culture or the experience of the New Englander, he 
never ceases to have roots in soil, so to speak. On one 
occasion Prof. Charles Eliot Norton remarked that he 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 431 

considered the poem " On a Bust of Dante," by Dr. 
Parsons, the finest one ever written on the immortal 
Italian. A devotee of Rossetti suggested his wonderful 
poem, and asked Professor Norton if he, indeed, con- 
sidered that of Dr. Parsons finer than Rossetti's. Prof. 
Norton replied in the afl[irmative, saying that Rossetti 
seemed to him affected. There is an inherent Puritan- 
ism in every son of New England, which, however 
latent it may lie, now and then asserts its grasp over 
determining matters of taste and choice. 

Poet, reformer, romancist, with a charm of personal- 
ity that is, in itself, one of the most potent of gifts, Col. 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson continues still his active 
days of a man of letters and social life. Colonel Higgin- 
son is the founder and the president of the choicest 
literary club of Boston, — the " Round Table " : he 
was long the president, as he is always one of the 
chief inspirers and leaders, of the Browning Club ; and 
the list of his published works is impressive. He has 
always stood for the most advanced and liberal thought ; 
lie was one of the early workers for freedom ; he has 
always warmly espoused the cause of woman suffrage, 
and his scholarly taste, his wide range of delightful 
friendships, his choice contribution to literature, invest 
his name with a magic power. In his reminiscences 
published under the title of " Cheerful Yesterdays," 
the reader gains vivid glimpses of the choicest life of 
the past half century. 

^Irs. Margaret Deland is another of the noted novel- 
ists of the Boston of tlie closing years of the Nine- 



432 BOSTON DAYS 



teenth century ; and in lier " John Ward, Preacher," 
and subsequent books, she has ranked among the best 
authors in contemporary fiction. 

The place held by Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps- 
Ward is one very distinctive in American literature. 
A daughter of one of the severest theologians, she yet 
startled the reading world by her radical ideas of the 
future life as presented in the " Gates Ajar." In the 
light of modern thought it is a little difficult to under- 
stand why there should have been anything incendiary 
in this picture of the possibilities of the future life, 
but it had its unquestioned work to do in breaking 
down theological barriers. It was, perhaps, the first 
important work to offer a rational picture of the life 
beyond death, as the natural and simple continuation 
and progress of this life. That such a work should come 
from the daughter of an Andover professor is not so 
strange when it is realized that this learned and revered 
scholar, however severe his creed, was one of the most 
tender and sympathetic of men, and that from both 
parents Mrs. Ward must have inherited her quality of 
exquisite literary talent. This fine quality of mind 
naturally made her susceptible to inspirations of a very 
high order. 

Whether Mrs. Phelps- Ward lias " concealed herself 
behind an autobiography " — to borrow the clever mot 
of Zangwill — in her autobiographical book entitled 
" Chapters from a Life," is an open question. The 
strict Andover atmosphere of her girlhood is graphically 
reproduced in these pages. It was a life narrow, but 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 433 

liigli. The life of well-defined views is not quite 
synonymous with that of great thought, but it has 
the mould, at least, of the higher intellectual life. 
Besides its interpretation of herself, — given with a 
delicate reserve that leaves the reader to crave more, — 
this book of Mrs. Ward's offers a multitude of charming 
and intimate glimpses of nearly all the noted New 
England authors. Of Longfellow she says : — 

" Thus indeed, reviewing Longfellow's life as a whole, 
we discern his days to be crowded with incident and ex- 
perience. Every condition of human life presented itself 
at his door, and every human being found a welcome 
there, — incidents and experiences coming as frequently 
to him through the lives of others as through the gate of 
his own being. The note of love and unity with the 
divine will was the dominant one which controlled his 
spirit and gave him calm." 

Certainly the salient points of the life of a woman of 
letters, with whom thoughts, rather than occurrences, 
are events, is told with a delicacy of reserve which is 
in itself an example of literary art, and that the at- 
mosphere seems half ideal is, nevertheless, one of its 
strongest claims to realistic truth ; for the environment 
of this remarkable woman has been essentially one of 
detachment from ordinary events. 

The summer residence of Mr. and Mrs. Ward is very 
picturesque at their Gloucester cottage, where Mrs. 
Ward has almost translated sea and surf into music 
and set them in her " Songs of a Silent World." With 
the ocean on one side of the jutting point, and Glou- 

28 



434 BOSTON DAYS 



cester harbor on the other, there is a Venetian-like 
effect to their home. Before tlie piazza are great 
rocks, and between this ledge and the shore the tide 
flows in. The color-pictures of a sea of sapphire, or 
silver gray, or of dreamy shades of amethyst, rose, or 
violet, transcend description ; and if one may see, 
flitting from piazza to rocks, a graceful, white-robed 
figure, with dark hair brushed carelessly away from 
the classic face, a hint of tuberoses at the throat, 
and the summer sunshine in the luminous eyes, he may 
not be far amiss if he fancy it to be that of the world- 
famous author, — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward. 

The pleasant informalities of summer life by the sea 
are reflected in this little note from Miss Phelps (before 
she became Mrs. Ward) to the Whipples, who were 

staying near : — 

Eastern Point. 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Whipple, — I sent over yesterday 
to see if you would u't take an early tea with me, but 
you were not to be found, and we left no message, think- 
ing it would be a medley by the time it reached you. 
To-day I am not quite as well, and so have not tried 
again. I hope at all events that you will get over to see 
me in some fashion before you go. 

Sincerely yours, 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 

One of the most delightful and effervescent person- 
alities was Miss Lucretia Peabody Hale, a sister of 
Edward Everett Hale, who, in recalling their childhood, 
would often gleefully narrate that in their nursery days 
her father's paper, the " Advertiser," was made to do 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 435 

duty at meals, pinned about their necks. Perhaps the 
future illustrious group absorbed something of this ex- 
ternal literary culture. Miss Susan Hale, her younger 
sister, is a wit, par excellence, a delightful woman of 
society, and is a most accomplished and extensive 
traveller. 

Miss Lucretia Hale, who will always be remembered 
as the author of that inimitable book, " The Peterkins," 
was a favorite pupil of the famous Elizabeth Peabody. 
The true Bostonese are all related or connected by 
intricate intermarriages, and, as a consequence, as Mr. 
Henry James has humorously portrayed in his stories, 
they are apt to speak of each other by their first names. 

Miss Hale's literary work was never by any means 
done in any well-regulated early morning hours. " I 
am absolutely useless till ten o'clock, at least," she used 
to say, " but I have observed that if I survive that hour 
I usually live through the day." It is a question if any 
Boston woman since the days of Margaret Fuller had 
ever so large a following, so to speak, as jVIiss Hale. 
Her literary classes drew about her many young people ; 
her literary work reached a still larger number, and her 
own friends and associates were practically infinite in 
variety. She had the talent for that large relatedness 
of life which so signally characterizes her distinguished 
brother. 

In the esteemed jurist and citizen. Judge Robert 
Grant, of the Boston of to-day, the literary world does 
not forget the Robert Grant who is one of the interest- 
ing figures among Boston authors. He has had the 



4.36 BOSTON DAYS 



typical career of the man who was born in Boston, 
graduated at Harvard, and has been the poet of the Phi 
Beta Kappa before the Harvard chapter. As an under- 
graduate ]\Ir. Grant showed the literary bent, and his 
work followed a certain sympathetic and delicately in- 
tuitive line of interpretation of social life, with flashes 
of wit and genial humor that make it delightful reading. 
He struck the keynote of fame in that wonderfully 
popular story of its day, the " Confessions of a Frivo- 
lous Girl," and between that and his latest novel, 
"Unleavened Bread," — one of the momentous studies 
in American fiction, — lie a long list of charming 
works. 

The old "West End" of Boston is changing so 
rapidly that one hardly recognizes it. Beacon Hill, 
Mount Vernon, Chestnut, and Pinckney streets are 
being rapidly invaded by trade and apartment houses. 
These afibrd beautiful views from all the upper stories, 
for the location is picturesque in the extreme, and the 
old landmarks are, thereby, disappearing. From a some- 
what provincial — even though choice — city of the 
gods and muses, Boston is becoming cosmopolitan, and 
the general topography of the city is undergoing a trans- 
formation, while the vast extension of residence regions, 
made possible by the superb system of local electric 
transit, has fairly created a " Greater Boston " with the 
celerity of the traditional miracle. 

The home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the poet, is one 
of the stately old mansions on Beacon Hill, and it has 
a cupola commanding a view which — especially at 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 437 

night, with the electric lights gleaming brilliantly amid 
the foliage of the Common, or reflected in the lake in the 
Public Gardens casting Rembrandtesque shadows over 
the stately architecture of the Back Bay — is most 
romantic. The large drawing-rooms, up one flight, 
after the manner of the old-time mansions of Boston, 
are interesting in their relics of travel and quaint carv- 
ings and old pictures ; brilliant companies throng them 
on occasions of receptions, or choice and select groups 
gather for the little dinners for which the house is 
famous, Mr. Aldrich's place in modern poetry is so 
unique that it is doubtless more widely appreciated 
than critically defined. Two things, at least, are appa- 
rent in his work, — apparent spontaneity, combined 
with the most exquisite finish. The subtle process no 
more lends itself to interpretation than does the song of 
the nightingale. 

The poetry of Mr. Aldrich is as distinctive as if he 
were the only poet in the world. This is not to say it 
is greater than any other ; but that it is of so unique 
and delicate a quality that it is only comparable with 
itself When one says that these lyrics are of the 
exquisite finish, of the most subtle, penetrating insight 
into the springs of life, it can well be added that these 
qualities are to be found in greater or less measure in 
other poets also ; but the subtle quality that makes 
them Mr. Aldrich's own escapes analysis and defini- 
tion ; it is felt rather than explained. Nor is there any 
special satisfaction in endeavoring to turn upon them 
some critical searchlight that shall reveal their defects 



438 BOSTON DAYS 



or limitations, if these they possess ; let one rather 
revel in their beauty. As an instance of this pictorial 
beauty, take these lines : — 

" My mind lets go a thousand things, 
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, 
And yet recalls the very hour — 
'T was noon by yonder village tower. 
And on the last blue noon in May — 
The wind came briskly up this way, 
Crisping the brook beside the road ; 
Then, pausing here, set down its load 
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly 
Two petals from that wild-rose tree." 

No painting could more wonderfully reproduce that 
scene, — the blue sky, the brisk May wind rippling the 
brook, the striking of the hour by the clock, and the 
two petals falling from the rose tree. Here is a per- 
fect artistic picture. In " Prescience " is as subtle and 
perfect a picture with the far-reaching tide of spiritual 
emotion added. 

" The new moon hung in the sky. 
The sun was low in the west, 
And my betrothed and I 

In the churchyard paused to rest. 

" And lo ! in the meadow sweet 
Was the grave of a little child, 
With a crumbling stone at the feet 
And the ivy running wild. 

" Stricken with nameless fears 
She shrank and clung to me, 
And her eyes were filled with tears 
For a sorrow I did not see. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 439 



" Tears for the unknown years 
And a sorrow that was to be ! " 

And how enchanting is this stanza from " The 
Unforgiven " : — 

"In the East the rose of morning seems as if 'twould blossom 
soon; 
But it never, never blossoms, in this picture ; and the moon 
Never ceases to be crescent, and there June is always June." 

Mr. Aldrich's poetry recalls to one everything delicate 
and most beautiful, — the shimmer of moonlight on the 
sea ; the faint fragrance of half-opened Marechal Niel 
roses ; the gold and rose of a summer sunset. The 
finest sculptured alabaster could not be more beautiful 
in line and form than many of his poems. 

Mrs. James T. Fields still continues to occupy her 
home on Charles Street from which the tide of fashion 
has long since ebbed away. Once within, the guest 
would no more wonder that she felt no inclination 
to migrate with her Lares and Penates to newer 
locations. The west windows of the house (at the 
back) command the Charles River, which, making 
here a bend, gives the length for its vista, and the 
glory of the sunset is a vision never to be forgotten. 
The house is a veritable literary museum, — a shrine 
of treasures, — crowded with rare books, engravings, 
portraits, autographs ; portraits of Pope, by Richardson, 
of Dickens, painted over a half a century ago by 
Alexander, of Lady Sunderland, by Sir Peter Lely. 



440 BOSTON DAYS 



And especially does one feel the very consecration of 
interest in the guest-chamber, which so many notable 
people have occupied. 

For in this home almost every foreign visitor of 
distinction has been a guest. Mr. Fields was the 
genial companion, the sympathetic and inspiring critic, 
friend, and publisher. He had the publishing instinct 
developed almost to genius. He had an intuitive 
grasp of what the public wanted or should want, the 
latter knowledge, perhaps, being the more important. 
He was an educator of public taste. His genial and 
sympathetic personality made him the centre of a not- 
able group of authors, both American and English. 
It was he who brought out the first edition in America 
of Tennyson's poems. He published for Thackeray 
and Dickens. Meantime our American classics — 
Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Mrs. Stowe, 
Tiioreau, Whipple — were appearing from his house. 
When over thirty years of age Mr. Fields married Miss 
Annie Adams, a girl of seventeen, whose character and 
gifts, as she developed into womanhood, were remark- 
ably sympathetic with his own. 

A very beautiful picture of Mrs. Fields, taken in her 
early womanhood, was a great favorite of Mr. Long- 
fellow, a copy of it always remaining on the man- 
tel of that upper chamber of his house which was 
once Washington's chamber and in wiiich the poet 
wrote " Hyperion." The hospitable home of Mr. and 
Mrs. Fields has played a notable part in the literary 
drama of Boston. In an upper room of their house 




Sarah Holland Adavis 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 441 

Emerson wrote his poem called " Voluntaries," on 
an occasion when he was their guest. At the table 
he told his host and hostess of the poem, and, after 
the meal they accompanied him to his room, where 
the scattered pages of the poem lay all over the 
carpet. On his reading it, he asked, " What shall 
the title be ? " to which Mrs. Fields at once replied, 
" Voluntaries." 

Mr. Whittier was an always welcome, albeit rather 
shy, guest among the Boston group. He was often a 
guest for weeks at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fields, 
and frequently, too, at the home of Governor and 
Mrs. Claflin. 

One of the most interesting figures in cosmopolitan 
society — for Europe as well as her own country claims 
her — is Miss Sarah Holland Adams, a sister of Mrs. 
Fields, an eminent German translator, and a lady of 
the most exquisite culture. For twenty years she 
lived abroad, largely in Berlin, where she was in touch 
with court circles and the best society of Germany in 
the world of thought and letters, and where one of her 
especial friends was Prof. Herman Grimm. 

Miss Adams translated his " Lectures on Goethe," a 
series of twelve which he delivered before the Univer- 
sity of Berlin, which, in the volume brought out by 
Little, Brown, and Company, constitute a contribution of 
value to Goethean literature. Another volume of the 
translations of Miss Adams comprises the essays of Dr. 
Grimm on Emerson, Carlyle, Frederick the Great, 
" The Brothers Grimm " (his father and uncle, the 



442 BOSTON DAYS 



authors of the celebrated " Fairy Tales "), and others. 
Early in the last decade of the century just passed Miss 
Adams returned to her home city, and in an apartment 
looking out on Copley Square she makes a charming 
home, in picture and book-lined rooms, always brilliant 
with flowers sent by her myriad of friends, and which is 
a social centre of the finest Boston life. The " Life of 
Raphael," the " Life and Times of Goethe," and the 
" Essays " of Prof. Herman Grimm have all been trans- 
lated by Miss Adams with that accuracy of significance 
and choice beauty of English which so notably charac- 
terize her literary work, 

Not only had Miss Adams a personal acquaintance 
with Professor Grimm, but a most intimate friendship. 
Her social circle in Berlin included, indeed, the most 
eminent men and women of the city, and at a literary 
festival she was decorated with a medal bearing on one 
side the portraits of the Grand Duke and Duchess of 
Weimar and on the other a laurel wreath and an 
inscription. This, the highest honor that Germany can 
bestow upon literary genius, was one singularly fitting 
to be given to Miss Adams. She was also made a 
member of the Gesellschaft, a literary society that is so 
cosmopolitan as to include members among the eminent 
people all over the w^orld, and her salon was a centre of 
the most brilliant intellectual life. At Weimar Miss 
Adams passed several delightful months. It was at 
Weimar that Bayard Taylor made his home chiefly during 
many years of his early life, and lie was much beloved 
by the court, and often read English poetry aloud to the 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 443 

Duke and Duchess and their children. One evening 
he read to them (in English) Poe's " Raven," and when 
he had finished, the Grand Duke said : " It is a terrible 
conception, for the raven can only symbolize despair, 
and he makes it perch upon the bust of Pallas, as if to 
say that despair broods over wisdom herself." 

The Grand Duke was a great lover of Hawthorne, 
and Miss Adams relates that he often spoke of him 
to Mr. Taylor, and related that Goethe spoke of Haw- 
thorne's luminous and magnificent eyes. 

The charm of personality which characterizes Miss 
Adams is something diflBcult to define. It is that gift 
and grace we call charm, the result of the fine inflores- 
cence of many exquisite qualities, to which intellectual 
grasp, imaginative power, sympathy, and social culture 
all contribute, and which is all these, and more, in its 
efi'ect. 

Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, whose manner has the 
same sympathetic winsomeness that invests her stories 
with a charmed atmosphere, though not a resident of 
Boston, yet has largely made one in the gifted circle of 
later years ; and Mrs. Celia Thaxter, too, was allured 
from the lovely sea-girt island that was her home for 
every summer, and in her early life for all the year, and 
that seemed a fit place for myth and legend and story. 
She was herself something of a Viking maiden, strong 
in her simple and spontaneous feeling, and pronounced 
in her individuality. Her sensitiveness to color is re- 
vealed in this part of a letter written to Mrs. Fields 
from Naples in 1880 : — 



444 BOSTON DAYS 



'■ Our hotel is high up. Before us lies Capri, melting in 
sapphire and amethyst. The Mediterranean is wondrous ; 
it is like the ' Arabian Nights ; ' it 's not like water ; it 's 
like leaping, liquid, prismatic flame all about its delicious 
islands." 

Her letters all show joyful, exuberant life and resist- 
less energy. She loved flowers passionately ; music, 
only less, and she cared for the more direct and simple, 
rather than philosophic literature. She loved " Char- 
lotte Bronte " with all her heart. She loved Whittier, 
and spoke appreciatively of his rare truth and goodness. 
It is a question if the subtleties of art appealed to her. 
On the stage she preferred Ellen Terry to Bernhardt. 
She revelled in color, and all her letters reveal vividly 
this free, simple, joyous, and unique nature. Aside 
from the strong, personal interest that it possesses, it is 
interesting as a character-study. 

It was like finding the philosophers, indeed, to find 
Mrs. Horace j\Iann and her sister, Elizabeth Peabody, 
one winter when they had rooms in the city on Bowdoin 
Street, in the old West End. It was a cold and blus- 
tering March evening, probably in 1885 or 1886, that 
one or two friends climbed the stairs to the rooms that 
the two ladies were occupying. The mixture of high 
thinking and plain living was striking. The rooms, 
only two or three, were in an old-fashioned house, and 
the sitting-room evidently served as kitchen and dining- 
room as well, in a kind of light housekeeping, where 
an oil stove and a cabinet did duty for range and 
pantry. In one corner was a superb marble bust of 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 445 

Horace Maun ; there were engravings of great value 
and beauty — many of them brought from Europe by 
the Hawthornes — on the walls ; there were rare books 
and bits of vertii, and, with these, the meagre furnishing 
almost of tenement rooms. The two aged sisters — 
gentlewomen, whose manner would have graced any 
court — were living in the utmost simplicity, but they 
lived and moved and had their being in the heavenly 
kingdom. They missed nothing that this world could 
have given them. They had bread to eat that the 
world knew not of. 

The guests drew their chairs before the fire. Miss 
Peabody was a large woman. Mrs. Mann was as tiny 
and delicate as a sparrow. The kerosene lamp flared 
and flickered, and finally went out, after the fashion of 
a lamp where the housekeepers are too much occupied 
with ethical problems to remember to fill it. The blus- 
tering March wind blew the branches of trees against 
the windows, like ghostly finger taps, and the noble 
and high-souled women talked, and their friends listened 
and listened, even then half conscious that this was to 
be an historic hour, 

Mrs. Mann spoke of her husband, and of the " pre- 
cious privilege " it had been to share his life ; and she 
and Miss Peabody went on — in true transcendental 
fasliion — to speak of the problem of evil as one that 
had no substantial existence, but was merely " the want 
of soul culture." 

Mrs. Anna Cabot Lodge was another of the strongly 
individualized characters of Boston. She lived into 



446 BOSTON DAYS 



advanced age, well on in the eighties, and her name 
was an authority in that way in which Boston society is 
peculiar. With ample wealth, with liberal endowment 
of wit and literary and social culture, Mrs. Lodge 
made her Beacon Street home a noted centre of life. 
Dr. Howe was one of her nearer friends, and she was 
deeply interested in his work for the blind. Mrs. Lodge 
drew about her, indeed, many of the most eminent 
people of the day, and among the most intimate habitues 
of her house was Charles Sumner. She was a highly 
intellectual woman, and so far as she was sympa- 
thetic, it was through the intellect, and not in the 
least through any poetic, intuitive, or imaginative feel- 
ing. That was not her metier. She was poised, keen, 
critical, extremely just in all her dealings, and a woman 
of an imperious will. During all the years of tlie 
domestic tragedy of Sumner's life, Mrs. Lodge was his 
friend and confidante. She was not, as already stated, 
an imaginative woman, but she was loyal and true, and, 
as the New England people say, one " always knew 
where to find her." She was penetrating, but not 
intuitive. Her force of intellect made her the former ; 
her lack of the poetry and divination of life denied 
her the magic of intuition. 

, Boston has been fortunate in a group of Catholic 
citizens, — poets and men and women of letters, — 
Boyle O'Reilly, Mrs. Mary E. Blake (the " M. E. B." 
of literature), Miss Katherine Eleanor Conway, and 
James Jeffi-ey Roche being all especially prominent. 
Mr. O'Reilly had the personality that charmed the hum- 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 447 

blest errand boy or the crudest laborer, as it did the 
choicest circles of Boston society. As president of the 
Papyrus Club, surrounded by the genius and wit of 
authors, artists, and scholars, he was not more de- 
lightful than in his professional and business relations 
with his associates in the daily work of life. His was 
a royal soul. A casual meeting and greeting on the 
street communicated to one a new stimulus and invig- 
oration. He was peculiarly and pre-eminently a man 
of large relatedness to life. Not only in his natural 
and inevitable relations to authorship and business, 
to his family and nearer friends and to general society, 
but to all humanity. No person could be so obscure, 
or so degraded, or so utterly outside the pale of what 
might seem some use in life, as to be outside the active 
sympathies of Boyle Olleilly. If an individual was in 
need, that was all the passport required to his sympathy, 
his counsel, and his assistance. He left the deserts to 
be judged by the All-Seeing, and asked no credentials 
of those whom his goodness benefited. Even if Mr. 
O'Reilly had lacked all his genius, his education, his 
extensive culture, he would still have been a great 
man, because of those great qualities. Such a life 
lived for more than twenty years in a city will readily 
be seen to have accumulated a vast number and variety 
of personal relationships on many planes of life. Men 
and women of genius, scholars and cultivated workers 
in the arts and professions found in him a delightful 
friend and companion ; men and women and young 
people of the cruder classes, found in him a counsellor 



448 BOSTON DAYS 



whose judgment was wise and unselfish, and whose 
sympathies were always responsive and generous, and 
full of stimulus and encouragement. 

Gen. Francis A. Walker and Mr. O'Reilly were the 
most inseparable of companions, and they used to 
take delight in puzzling their friends regarding their 
individual identity, as they strikingly resembled each 
other. Entering Mrs. Whipple's drawing-room on her 
Sunday " evenings " together, the one would assert to 
his hostess, " I am Walker," and the other, " I am 
O'Reilly," and it was quite safe to reverse these alleged 
identities in addressing them. Mrs. Whipple relates 
that when the statue to Boyle O'Reilly — placed at 
the Boylston Street entrance to the Back Bay Park — 
was unveiled. General Walker sat so that his profile 
was just within range of the portrait bust of the 
dead patriot and poet, and that the face of the sculp- 
tured marble might well have been for the poet's 
friend as well. 

" It 's better to be Irish than to be right," Mr. 
O'Reilly would sometimes laughingly say, and the con- 
versation between himself and General Walker was 
often a perpetual flash of wit and repartee. 

Two familiar figures in social and literary circles are 
Nathan Haskell Dole, poet, wit, novelist, and eminent 
translator, and Arlo Bates, an autlior to whom the lovers 
of a national literature may well feel indebted for the 
fine work he contributes. His novel called " The Wheel 
of Fire " has passages that, in vivid intensity and psy- 
chological analysis, suggest Hawthorne in the " Scarlet 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 449 

Letter," and his poems are among those that have 
claim to literary permanence. 

Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells is a woman whose singu- 
larly fine insight into life and art makes her one of 
the most interesting of Bostonians. The father of 
Mrs. Wells, the Rev. Dr. Gannett, was a noted Uni- 
tarian divine of his day, and a portrait of him which 
hangs in her drawing-room shows one of the typical 
New England thinkers whose doctrines of plain living 
and plain thinking laid the foundations for all that is 
best in the New England of to-day. In her hospitable 
home are some of the most delightful literary and social 
reunions. 

To hold the presidency of such an educational 
centre as that of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology means more than the usual office of college 
president, and General Walker's administration was a 
remarkable one. It is an institution where great 
forces diverge rather than converge. It is an institute 
that comprehends widely different trends. It is de- 
partmental and each department has its head. Over 
all this complicated work General Walker held sway. 
His military training had been of infinite value to him 
in acquiring easy command ; the lectures and other 
work in which he had been engaged had prepared 
him in every respect to meet this vast and complicated 
demand on his knowledge, his energies, and his direc- 
tive ability. 

Besides this work however, or rather, with this as a 
centre from which to radiate, General Walker entered 

29 



450 BOSTON DAYS 



into the life of politics and of municipal interests. He 
was a member of the park commission, the art com- 
mission, and a trustee of the Public Library. He was 
a leader and an authority on the statistics of finance. 
He was a frequent contributor to such reviews as the 
" Forum," the " North American," and the " Arena." 
He was one whom France would have distinguished as 
a " first citizen." 

A literary festival marking the eighty-first anniver- 
sary of the birth of Mr. Longfellow by an authors' 
reading, was held in Sanders Theatre, the interior well 
known for Harvard Commencement exercises, where a 
long Latin inscription is over the stage, and, at the 
left, is the life-size statue of President Quincy. This 
" Reading " vvas a night that left its impression on 
memory. The stage was charmingly arranged with 
flowers and palms and shaded lamps on little tables 
grouped about ; and then there sat Colonel Higginson 
who presided with his own inimitable grace, Mrs. Julia 
Ward Howe, Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Mrs. 
Louise Chandler Moulton, John Boyle O'Reilly, Mr. 
William Winter, Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, Heze- 
kiah Butterworth, Mr. Charles Follen Adams, and the 
*' founder of the feast," — as Colonel Higginson so hap- 
pily said, — Miss Charlotte Fiske Bates, later Madame 
Rog^. A bust of the poet Longfellow, crowned with 
laurel, graced the centre of the stage, and above was 
the inscription, in living green, " Longfellow, 1807-" 
The audience included a large number of the literati 
of Cambridge and Boston, an audience peculiarly re- 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 451 

sponsive and appreciative. Colonel Higginson opened 
his felicitous remarks with an allusion to the Spanish 
proverb, — that a man cannot be bell-ringer and walk 
in the procession at the same time, although he seemed 
to prove that he himself, could, for beside his graceful 
presiding, he read one of his own poems, " Dame 
Craigie," which was most appreciatively received. 

Mrs. Howe read her " Sunset on the Nile " and several 
short poems on Italian themes, and afterward recited 
some verses she had written to Longfellow. Colonel 
Higginson's introduction of Dr. Hale was very amusing. 
The statue of Josiah Quincy, once president of the col- 
lege, reminded him, he said, when he looked from it 
to Dr. Hale (the only officer of the university on the 
stage), of an occasion painfully near fifty years ago, 
when not only three of the speakers, but all of them, 
had worn gowns. And on that day President Quincy 
had said, in calling forward one young man, " Exspec- 
tatur oratio in lingua vernacula." With this and a 
" Hail, Hale," Dr. Hale came forward and read " My 
Double and How He Undid Me," till the audience as 
well, were fairly undone with laughter. Mr. William 
Winter, who may well be called the Moore of America 
in the wonderful melody and music of his poems, — 
read his lines on Longfellow, some stanzas beginning, 
" Could we but feel that our lost ones are near us," 
and his poem, " The Chieftain," in praise of Dr. Holmes. 
Mr. J. T. TroAvbridge's contribution to the evening 
was made up entirely of those verses of his which 
describe simply and with no little pathos the tardy 



452 BOSTON DAYS 



success of a playwright who has long been fighting 
poverty. 

Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton was felicitously intro- 
duced by Colonel Higginson, who related a portion of a 
conversation which he had with a gentleman in London 
who had spoken to him of the blindness which was the 
perpetual discouragement of his son's poetic talent, and 
of a gracious, sympathetic woman who had encouraged 
the son to write, and, by reading his verses aloud, had 
shown them to be poetry. The same justice which 
she had rendered to the work of the young, blind 
poet, Philip Bourke Marston, would now be rendered 
to some of her own poems, he said. Mrs. Moulton 
read first, ''The House of Death," which was poor 
Marston's favorite, and her beautiful "At Midnight," 
" In a Garden," and " Come Back, Dear Days." Mrs. 
Moulton's winning manner, tra'mante voice, and charm 
of presence was felt by all. The poet — the woman — 
seemed revealed in all the beauty of her artistic genius 
and her loveliness of presence. Another of the great 
pleasures of the evening was the reading of Boyle 
O'Reilly, which included some of his crisp, keen, elec- 
tric epigrams, followed by the thrilling " Ensign Epps," 
and " In Bohemia." 

Charles Follen Adams was introduced with a stroke 
of wit, and recited his " Lecdle Yawcob Strauss " in 
an inimitable German accent, and Miss Bates gave " My 
Thought and I," and some tributary verses which she 
had written to Longfellow. In closing, Colonel Hig- 
ginson paid a graceful and fitting tribute to Miss Bates, 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 453 

and the evening ended with the reading of Lowell's 
beautiful lines to Longfellow, beginning, " I need not 
praise the sweetness of his song." The entertainment 
was one of the most interesting occasions in both life 
and literature. 

The name of Hezekiali Butterworth is one to conjure 
with in his home city where he is known, — not only 
as the author of the finest poem on Lincoln that has 
ever been written and of charming books of travel, but 
also as a delightful lecturer and one of the most ideal 
of friends. 

A curious thing was noted by the entire audience at 
this reading. All the evening there was a sound of 
faint, far-away music in the air. It was as delicate as 
the strain of an ^olian harp, as mournful as a burial 
chant ; and it was a peculiarly haunting eerie sound. 
" Telegraph wires ? " exclaimed a friend to whom it 
was related. But there were no wires there. "A 
device of the freshmen," was suggested. The " Trans- 
cript," alluding to this curious sound, said : — 

"It seemed like the ghost of vanished music Imunting 
the hall. When Mr. William Winter, in a peculiarly mourn- 
ful voice and accent, read his own poem upon Long- 
fellow's death, which has these lines often repeated, like 
a refrain, 

" ' And still the night wind's moan goes on, 
And still the mystery is here,' 

this strange, ghostly music echoed the refrain with a 
shudderiuo; sort of weirdness." 



454 BOSTON DAYS 



One could hardly help fancying this had some un- 
known origin, so peculiarly unaccountable was the 
occurrence, and it was plainly heard by two or three 
hundred people. 

Oscar Fay Adams, poet, story-writer, and literary 
editor and compiler, is one of the younger Boston au- 
thors whose charming gifts, fastidious taste, and well- 
directed energy have contributed greatly to latter-day 
culture. The author of that inimitable collection of 
tales under the title of " The Archbishop's Unguarded 
Moment, and Other Stories," and of poems that have 
just claim to permanent importance in lyric art, — Mr. 
Adams has also done much other work, in various direc- 
tions, that is full of interest and of value. 

One of the most perfect specimens of exquisite lit- 
erary art in the English language is a romance entitled 
" The Duchess Emilia," by Prof. Barrett Wendell, of 
Harvard, an author whose criticism and lectures are, 
while often unique and exciting controversy, always of 
serious claim to attention. Professor Wendell's fine 
monograph on Mr. Francis Parkman, and his notable 
biography of Cotton INIather, are among the permanent 
works in American literature. Of Cotton Mather, Pro- 
fessor Wendell says : — 

" Day after day, week after week, month after month, 
year after year, he cast himself in the dust before the 
Lord ; he strained his eyes for a fleeting glimpse of the 
robes and crowns of God's angels, his ears for the faintest 
echo of their celestial music. Pure in motive, noble in 
purpose, his whole life was an nneudiug effort to 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 455 

strengtheu in himself tliat phase of human nature whose 
inner token is a riot of mystical emotion. . . . The pas- 
sionate idealism to which he held with all his heart — like 
honest priests since the world began — colored and 
glorified, and made divine even the meanest things in 
petty earthly life he knew. . . . All about him he saw 
ever crescent disappointment and sorrow, and earthly 
failure ; but he never lost heart, not even for a moment 
ceased effort with word and deed alike, to do good to 
mankind. ... In his ministry Cotton Mather never fal- 
tered, . . . and among the Puritan priests there was never 
one, I believe, more faithfully earnest than this Cotton 
Mather." 

No other such perfect interpretation of this unique 
and remarkable man has ever been given to him whose 
mortal body has lain for nearly two hundred years in 
the old Mather tomb on Copp's Hill. 

So great in influence, so impressive in heroic noble- 
ness that she seems to belong to the world rather than 
to any one city, — Mary A. Livermore is, nevertheless, 
Boston born and bred, and her name confers added lustre 
even to that period when " the total air was fame." The 
great directive force of the work of the Sanitary Com- 
mission in the Civil War, which she organized and 
conducted ; the woman whose impassioned eloquence 
as an orator is unrivalled in all the ages ; whose great- 
ness of soul is only equalled by her nobility of heart. 
]\Irs. Livermore is great — not only because she has a 
strong and active and finely disciplined intellect ; not 
only because she has a storehouse of deeper and more 
varied experiences than any other one American woman. 



456 BOSTON DAYS 



on account of her important work in the war and wide 
relations to humanity, — but more than all because 
she represents the spirit of American institutions. 
Patriotism is a duty, she feels, and she lives this duty. 
Who are you, she will say, that your street, your neigh- 
borhood, your town, your country, shall not be better 
and happier that you live in it. 

Mrs. Livermore may well be considered the most 
potent influence of the Nineteenth century on American 
womanhood. Mrs. Howe, with her exquisite culture 
and philosophic thought, Lucy Stone, with her in- 
vincible energy and sweetness of nature, Susan B. 
Anthony, with her stirring logic and good sense, Eliza- 
beth Cady Stanton, with her serene sway and invincible 
logic, Frances Willard, in her special work for temper- 
ance, always serene and strong on moral heights, — 
these, and other leaders of social achievement who 
might be named, have all contributed greatly and nobly ; 
but out of all this brilliant galaxy the name of Mary A. 
Livermore shines like a fixed star in the heavens. It 
is she who has traversed the entire country as the great 
popular lecturer, not specifically for suffrage, or temper- 
ance, or education, but including these, and as the great 
insi^irer ; one whose power made for the enlarge- 
ment and the uplifting of the general life. She has 
always been close to the hearts of the people, and 
without any invidious comparison, it must be said that 
she has exerted a wider and a more universal influence 
than any other one American woman. In Mrs. Liver- 
more's lectures, and in even her most informal talks, 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 457 

there is a depth of spiritual vitality that appeals in- 
stantly and profoundly to her audience, and establishes 
a swift and direct relation between speaker and hearer. 
In this lies, perhaps, the secret of her marvellous power. 
For thirty years the bare announcement that Mrs. 
Livermore was to speak would fill any lecture hall, 
east or west, to overflowing. She has the divine gift 
of sympathy. She is in touch with all the infinite 
power of the unseen life. She was born with the pro- 
foundly spiritual temperament, not merely an ethical 
bias, but the true spirituality of life. There is a wide 
difference between the two. Ethics and morality are 
negative ; faith and love are the positive and magnetic 
qualities. " I am not ashamed," said Mrs. Livermore, 
once in conversation, " to confess myself a convert to the 
power of prayer." The words were as simple in their 
sublimity, or as sublime in their simplicity, as those of 
Saint Paul when he said, " I am not ashamed of the 
gospel of Christ." 

"Whatever contribution to progress I have been 
able to make," said Mrs. Livermore one morning, " has 
been entirely due to my husband. From the day of our 
marriage to that of his death he surrounded me with 
the most perfect atmosphere for my thought and work. 
He left me entirely free. We could talk over all sub- 
jects ; we could differ upon them without heat. When 
we were married I was a member of the Baptist 
Church, and he a Universalist minister, — and for three 
years I continued to go to my own church. He would 
ask me on my return if I had heard an interesting 



458 BOSTON DAYS 



sermon. There was only one subject, so far as I 
know, on which he felt that ray opinion was absolutely 
wrong, and that was the matter of protection and free 
trade." 

"Not a very personal subject, surely, between hus- 
band and wife," remarked her guest. 

" No. On that," she replied, " he used to tell me 
that I spoke well, but that my premises were all 
wrong." 

The home of Mrs. Livermore is in Melrose, a beauti- 
ful suburban town some eight miles from Boston, with 
the romantic scenery of the Middlesex Fells all around. 
On one side she looks out on a beautiful blue lake, 
with hills in the near distance. It is a pleasant home, 
with spacious, hospitable rooms, and books and pic- 
tures everywhere in the cozy way of a house that 
has grown into a home. Many houses never become 
homes at all. When they do it is because they express 
the advancing household life from year to year — the 
new books bought and read together and talked over ; 
the pictures that are the gift of friend or artist or the 
purchase of appreciation ; the furnishing and decora- 
tions that have a certain fitness as the manifestation of 
the individual taste and selection that brings them 
together. 

One is often amused by seeing in the city a palace 
built and appropriately decorated and furnished, — by 
carte hlanche given to the upholsterer and the artist, — 
and when all is completed, even to the smallest detail, 
the owners close and barricade it and go to Europe for 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 459 

three years. Not so the home of the Livermores. It 
has grown year by year as life in tastes and require- 
ments and means expanded for the husband and wife, 
whose beautiful half century of wedded love is as 

" — perfect music set to noble -words." 

Mrs. Livermore's study is lined with books. Her 
large, roll-top desk is in a corner by a window, her 
revolving chair before it. Its pigeon-holes are full, and 
the waste-basket, full even in the early morning of 
envelopes, reveals the voluminous correspondence 
every mail brings upon her in an avalanche that only her 
great executive and administrative power enables her to 
handle. She is consulted on every conceivable subject. 
The scope, number, and variety of the letters which 
Mrs. Livermore receives in any one day would suggest 
a good degree of the world's happenings. She is 
appealed to by great firms and societies for a confiden- 
tial opinion regarding certain individuals, or movements, 
or objects. Her judgment settles many a matter of 
■which the world little dreams. There lies behind her 
eighty years of the most flawless integrity, admirable 
poise, great good sense, keen, and, one might say, practi- 
cally unerring moral discrimination ; and an irresistible 
energy that has been perpetually fed from the Divine 
energy and whose enthusiasm has been organized and 
applied to the most remarkable work for the advance- 
ment of humanity. About the study are portraits of 
Dr. Livermore, whose companionship has only grown 
still closer and more responsive since he passed into the 



460 BOSTON DAYS 



unseen ; of Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and other 
friends. Here she writes and thinks and produces 
her literary work. 

To one with any fancy for tracing out the correspon- 
dences and the significances of life, there is something 
impressive in the way that Mary Ashton Rice and the 
Rev. Daniel Parker Livermore first met. It was in 
Duxbury, a seacoast town down on what is called the 
" South Shore " from Boston, on a Christmas eve. Mrs. 
Livermore (then Miss Rice) had gone out for a walk. 
The sea was at flood-tide and the radiant moonlight 
traced its broad track of silver across the bay. She 
found herself near the Universalist church, when, as 
she says, " a triumphant burst of song rang out on the 
night air. ' Glory to God in the highest ; on earth 
peace and good will to men ! ' " Again was the glad 
song repeated, " as if the singers were unable to repress 
their joy," she has said, " and I listened till the anthem 
was ended. Should I enter ? " 

What a picture in this moment and what a crisis it 
was — the point, indeed, which determined all the 
future life, the marvellous influence and work of the 
nation's divinest helper — Mary A. Livermore. Here 
was the hour of destiny — the hour freighted with that 
intense significance of life which is seldom recognized 
except from the perspective of the long years to come. 
Should she enter ? That church portal was the " open 
door " of her life. If she had not entered, it would 
have been much the worse for the world and for all 
who live in it. But when a nature is held in con- 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 46l 

stant loyalty to God and the Divine will the leading is 
sure and the angels hold tlieir charge concerning the 
life which keeps true to the heavenly influence. Such 
a life was that of the young girl just entering her early 
twenties, who paused in the moonlight on Cliristinas 
eve with the silver track of light on the ocean before 
her, with the choral music of " Glory to God in the 
highest " in the air, and with clouds of witnesses unseen 
above. Was not that moment one whose exaltation 
well initiated the noble, far-reaching, and profoundly 
significant influence upon the world that for more than 
fifty years has been exerted by Mary A. Livermore ? 

She entered. A blond young man of twenty-five was 
in the pulpit. "And thou shait call His name Jesus, 
for He shall save His people from their sins," was the 
text. " Save His people from their sins ! " Mrs. Liver- 
more says she mentally ejaculated ; " that is not the 
correct reading." She consulted a Bible and conceded 
the correctness. " It was a statement that had never 
arrested my attention," she said, " or made any impres- 
sion upon me." The sermon began. 

"It was not from endless punishment that Christ 
came to save us," said the young preacher, " but from 
our sins. He came to teach us how to live that we 
might avoid the mistakes of wrong-doings to which we 
are liable." He went on with illustration as familiar 
as the rudimentary mathematics, to the girl who listened 
so intensely and yet utterly new in combination. 

" A great peace stole over me," she said ; " a pulsa- 
tion of love for all the world throbbed through my 



462 BOSTON DAYS 



being." Although some twenty years were to pass 
before this young woman was to enter upon her world- 
work, yet this was the hour of initiation into the Divine 
purpose. The rest of the story is a matter of sequences. 
Would the young minister lend her his sermon to read? 
He would and he did, and there began a duet of mutual 
trust and love and sweetness and work paralleled only 
by that story of the love of the poets, Robert and Eliza- 
beth Browning. " Aurora Leigh " had not then been 
written, but in its magnetic words the young minister 
might well have said to her : — 

" The world waits 
For help. Beloved, let us love so well 
Our work shall still be sweeter for our love, 
And still our love be sweeter for our work." 

The first home of Mr. and Mrs. Livermore was in 
Fall River, Mass., where he was the pastor of a church, 
and his wife entered into his work with all her charac- 
teristic earnestness. Not within these limits can their 
work be pictured. Largely is it known and read of all 
men, and it is, as she has said, largely due to the per- 
fect conditions which Dr. Livermore created and made 
always possible for the genius of his wife. 

It was he who encouraged and sustained all her pub- 
lic work. When that vast, bewildering call of the sani- 
tary commission came and Mrs. Livermore shrank from 
its weight of responsibility, feeling that as wife and 
mother she could not leave her home, it was her hus- 
band who said to her: "Mary, you arc called to the 
angelic side of the war." To go forth to help — to 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 463 

heal, to care for the wounded and the suffering, to 
speak the last words to the dying, to carry aid and 
sympathy and uplift — that was the work to which, 
through her husband's sustaining counsel, she gave 
herself. Then, the war being over, came that extraor- 
dinary lecturing experience, of Mrs. Livermore's, extend- 
ing over a quarter of a century, during which she was a 
burning and a shining light in almost every city and 
town in the United States. 

She carried the message of intelligent activity and of 
moral inspiration. Whatever her theme, — in educa- 
tion, temperance, politics, literature, or affairs, — she 
aroused, stimulated, and uplifted the people. From 
the greatest statesman, the most brilliant leader of the 
literati, the reformer, — to the woman in domestic life in 
a Western town, — all thronged to hear Mrs. Livermore. 
No one was too lofty to be benefited ; no one too 
humble to understand. Nor need one allude to Mrs. 
Livermore's lectures as a chapter that is closed. Only 
recently the Y. M. C. A. of Melrose begged her to 
address them. A thoroughly orthodox organization, 
Mrs. Livermore reminded them that by their ideas she 
was a heretic. They smiled. If such lives as Mrs. 
Livermore's are those of heretics, heresy will be at a 
premium. 

One characteristic little incident of her lecturing life 
is this : The rector of a very prominent church in Boston 
went to Mrs. Livermore to ask her to address the young 
men of his parish on temperance. He told her they 
were the very flower of aristocracy, culture, and wealtli, 



464 BOSTON DAYS 



— young men to whom all the kingdoms of the earth 
were open, but who were undermining their powers by 
fashionable intemperance. (This was some years ago, 
when the accepted standards of fashion were less 
refined than now.) The rector went on to explain to 
Mrs. Livermore that the regulation temperance talk 
would have no effect at all on this particular audience. 
So she started on a new tack. She primed herself with 
the scientific side of the subject, — the disintegrating 
power of alcohol on the physical nature, sapping all the 
springs of vitality and weakening and disintegrating the 
intellectual powers. The day and the hour came. An 
audience that taxed the resources of the room was 
present, — the young men, their mothers, sisters, wives, 
and sweethearts. The attitude of the men was one of 
great nonchalance and polite indifference, with a tacit 
expression to the lecturer that they had no objection to 
listening, but that nothing she could say would make 
any impression upon them, and she might as well accept 
that as a foregone conclusion. 

Mrs. Livermore looked them over and was in nowise 
disturbed. She opened her discourse. She marshalled 
fact after fact of scientific accuracy drawn from unques- 
tionable authority. Her hearers began to sit up with 
an alert attention. They listened with an interest that 
deepened to eagerness. They became responsive and 
sympathetic with the masterly argument. At its close 
they gathered around her ; they inquired into her 
authorities, and copied the names of treatise and medi- 
cal or scientific author. And as she entered her car- 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 465 

riage they brought her a gigantic box of jacqueminot 
roses — fifty or more of those long-stemmed jacque- 
minots which are fairly a forest of blazing splendor, and 
which required the services of brakeman and policeman 
to aid her in carrying until she was finally bestowed in 
her own carriage, with which her husband met her 
when she alighted from the train at Melrose. 

The present years of Mrs. Livermore's life are full of 
interest and beauty. Her intellectual power is only 
clearer and deeper as time adds increasing study, cul- 
ture, and thought. Her health is fairly good ; she often 
addresses audiences — and she is seeing people in all 
possible relations, from those of her intimate friends to 
the strangers who make to her a perpetual pilgrimage. 
Problems of life of all kinds — the most intimate and 
far-reaching — are continually submitted to her. To 
each and all she speaks the word of counsel and of 
wisdom. 

Mrs. Livermore's household includes her sister, a 
daughter, her secretary, and servants. Just opposite 
her house is the pretty home of her married daughter, 
where a family of grandchildren are devoted to her, as 
are her townspeople. She is the beloved as well as the 
venerated friend of each and all, and the days are filled 
with manifestations of this love and respect. Although 
the town of Melrose made its municipal celebration of 
Mrs. Livermore's eightieth birthday on Dec. 18, 1900, 
there is no suggestion of traditional " old age " about 
this benignant and charmingly interesting lady whose 
presence is a perfect energy of inspiration toward all 

so 



466 BOSTON DAYS 



that is lovely and pure and of good report. Her sym- 
pathies with youth are as keen as her judgment is wise. 
Her hold on eternal truth is unfailing, and her life is 
that of the profound spirituality that recognizes the 
perpetual interpretation of the seen by the unseen, and 
the perfect and unfailing communion of spirit to spirit 
across the change we call death. An idyl in human 
history is the beautiful and forever-united life of the 
Rev. Dr. Daniel P. and Mary.Ashton Rice Livermore. 

On a recent celebration of Lincoln's birthday Mrs. 
Livermore was the orator of the occasion, and for 
almost two hours, in an address given entirely without 
notes, she held the breathless attention of a great 
audience who felt it to be a classic masterpiece. What 
was the secret of it ? Wlio may analyze the power ? 
She passed in review the salient points of Lincoln's 
heredity and surroundings and early influences, showing 
them in such vivid relation to the great significance of 
his after-life as to offer a truer biographical picture of 
Lincoln than has, perhaps, before been given save in 
that sublime interpretation of his life by Col. Henry 
Watterson. Mrs. Livermore's knowledge of Lincoln 
was contemporary, and from the standpoint of the most 
intelligent and comprehensive sympathy. In the thrilling 
events of his lifetime she bore no unimportant part. She 
depicted his unvarying goodness of heart, his patience 
under misconstruction, his magnanimity, his nobleness, 
and that wonderful life lived again before the audience. 
The lecture made a red-letter day in its wonderful 
fulness of interest. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 467 

Mrs. Livermore has contributed immeasurably to 
the true conceptions of spirituality. She has come 
through clearer and closer study of its phenomena 
and by her receptivity to the life in the unseen, to 
comprehend the essential nature of the life here and 
that which is to come, and to teach the vital truth in a 
manner whose impressiveness is wholly her own. Stand- 
ing on the brink of more than eighty years, she looks 
before and after. There is an amusing little story that 
some years ago there was a gathering at which were a 
number of people well on toward fourscore, and that 
the poet Whittier said to Mrs. Livermore : " How old 
art thou, Mary ? " She replied, " Sixty-five, Green- 
leaf," and he rejoined, " Get thee hence ! get thee 
hence ! thou 'rt nothing but a giddy girl." 

After the death of her husband, the Rev. Dr. Daniel 
P. Livermore, Mrs. Livermore wrote to a friend : — 

" Among the last words of INIr. Livermore was his wish 
that I would go on as I had been living. ' Don't give up 
any work you are engaged in ; only try not to overdo.' 
I have great need of work now. It is to me more than 
mone}^, sympathy, food, or raiment. I must live worthily ; 
I cannot be overborne now, at close of my life, by sorrow, 
depression, and loneliness." 

These noble words are so universal in their signifi- 
cance that they may well be a theme for consideration. 
For when one comes to think of it, the cure for all the 
ills in the world is to live worthily. An unfailing 
recipe for unhappiness and misery is to live in self- 
contemplation ; an unfailing recipe for a lofty and 



468 BOSTON DAYS 



noble order of happiness is to live in generous thought 
and purpose and out-going sympathies for other lives 
and for the things that make for progress. 

All the interests, motives, and aspirations that make 
up daily life extend themselves so indefinitely into the 
unseen vrorld that neither their quality nor their course 
of direction can be adequately discussed save as the 
larger recognition is given to this ever-advancing horizon 
line. The outer life is but a fraction projected from the 
completeness that lies in this larger universe. 

Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, D.D., who succeeded 
James Freeman Clarke as pastor of the " Church of the 
Disciples," will leave a very distinctive impress upon 
Boston life. As a preacher, his sermons abound in 
epigrammatic passages of the finest spiritual signifi- 
cance. In the religious history of America he will 
rank among the great preachers who have from time 
to time stirred the mind and uplifted the hearts of the 
people. From Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards on 
to Theodore Parker, Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. Bush- 
nell, James Freeman Clarke, Edward Everett Hale, 
Phillips Brooks, George A. Gordon, and E. Winchester 
Donald, — in this galaxy the name of Dr. Ames shines 
like a star. Boston has always been most fortunate in 
her clergy, including so many men of eminence whose 
lives and public spirit have illustrated the ideals they 
enforced from the pulpit. 

The incalculable aid to all nobler life by the ministry 
of the Rev. Dr. George A. Gordon and by his literary 
work as well, and by the divinely unselfish life and 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 469 

work of Father Field, the noble energy of Dr. Leigh- 
ton Parks, and of many others still, happily, in the midst 
of Boston life, are the priceless treasures of the City of 
Beautiful Ideals. 

The idea is sometimes advanced that people are 
" outgrowing the churches ; " that the general diffu- 
sion of literature, the lecture platform, the Sunday 
newspapers, athletics, amusements in general, — to say 
nothing of Buddhism, Mohammedism, Theosophy, the 
following of Abbas Effcndi, the various forms of 
" Mind Cure " and Christian Science, or palmistry, 
astrology, and other magic divinations have crowded out 
the church. The idea that these are more than a sub- 
stitute for religious organization is an idea that will 
never take root in American life. Our country is one 
founded upon moral ideals, and these are stimulated 
and nurtured by organized religion. The church is 
expanding with the age. It stands to-day not only for 
its regular religious services of song and worship, but 
as a centre of activity which extends in countless direc- 
tions and which appeals under numberless forms, — 
directions and forms which suggest themselves to every 
one. There is abundance of room for every variety of 
religious thought, and, in so far as it is sincere and held 
as an aid to the attainment of divine ideals, perhaps the 
more deeply all forms of its thought and philosophy are 
studied, the better it may be for the community. 

The " Church of the Disciples " is included among 
those of the Unitarian faith, biit it stands for some- 
thing far more vital than speculative inquiry. It is 



470 BOSTON DAYS 



the church " founded on elective affinities, not on the 
purse principle," as James Freeman Clarke said, — the 
church that has such a wealth of spiritual inheritance 
that one approaches it only with tender reverence. 
Its early history W9^ identified with the history of the 
life of James Freeman Clarke, who for fifty years was 
its only pastor. At his death by his previous request 
Rev. Charles Gordon Ames, then pastor of a church 
in Philadelphia, was invited to the charge, which he 
accepted. 

Dr. Ames's service in the Church of the Disciples 
often leaves its impress on the mind as a beautiful 
picture. The portrait of James Freeman Clarke, painted 
by William Hunt, looks out from the lilies within which 
it is often wreathed. The reading-desk is filled with 
flowers ; palms and shining lilies encircle the minister 
as he stands in his pulpit, his countenance illuminated 
with the light of the spirit, the whole atmosphere one 
of silence and beauty. The flowers seem to fitly adorn 
a sacred festival. The music floats on the air, all sun- 
shine and exaltation and gladness. 

" The great days of life," we hear the pastor saying, 
" are not the days when something happens outside of us. 
They are the days when something happens Inside, — days 
of spiritual expansion ; days of discovery or illumination, 
when we gain clearer perception of high realities, see 
deeper meanings in life ; days of moral re-enforcement, 
when we make decisions and are prepared for worthier 
achievement. What a day for the blind, when the scales 
fall and his eyes are opened ! A white day — a day of 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 471 

light ! Our greater birthdays are the claj's when we enter 
into truer life and come into possession of that inner good 
which is our proper inheritance as the children of God." 

One of the most memorable sermons of Dr. Ames 
is that entitled " The American Republic and the 
Kingdom of God," in which the true values of life are 
presented with great impressiveness. 

The sermons of Dr. Ames are held to be of the finest 
order, and his personal following adds largely to his 
congregation beyond those who are enrolled in mem- 
bership of the church. The prevailing spirit of the 
teachings of Dr. Ames is that of the inspiration of 
the higher life, — the possibility as well as the duty 
to live nobly day by day. His sermons have a very 
distinctive quality which is difficult to define in words. 
They are full of that radiant energy which communi- 
cates a spiritual impulse, the literary quality is fine, 
and there is usually a very deep vein of philosophy 
running through them ; but beyond this is a certain 
unusualness in a simple, direct, forcible, and impressive 
presentation of truth that enters into the very heart 
of life and seems to implant vital germs of the diviner 
spirit. It is a quality that leads one to feel after the 
service is over that with him old things have passed 
away and all has become new ; that there is a new 
^heaven and a new earth ; that he goes homeward not 
only refreshed, but renewed in his spiritual life ; that 
all his future is to express this nobler purpose and 
that all life must henceforth be lived on this higher 
plane. 



472 BOSTON DAYS 



That pleasant home on Chestnut Street where the 
cordial hospitality of Dr. and Mrs. Ames radiates its 
cheer, seems to hold in itself the loveliness of the 
Boston days that have gone from all save memory, and 
all the promise, too, of the new Boston, — the Boston 
of the Twentieth century. 

Mrs. Fanny B. Ames — the wife of Dr. Ames — is 
one of the most brilliant women of the age, both in 
scholarly culture and in directive power. A leader in 
many organizations, her charming personality makes 
itself an effective factor in social advancement. 

Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, whose work in intellectual 
and philosopliic progress is so important a feature in 
the social development of this City of Beautiful Ideals, 
has, among other contributions to belles lettres, compiled 
a volume of translations of Michael Angelo's poems, 
including some of her own, and others by Mr. Frank 
B. Sanborn, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr, John S. 
Dwight, and Miss Eva Channing, together with transla- 
tions made by Taylor, Harford, Symonds, and Southey. 

No record of the Nineteenth century in Boston 
could fail to include a reference to the oldest club 
organization of women, called " The New England 
Woman's Club," of which Mrs. Howe has been the 
life-long president, and Mrs. Cheney one of its most 
important directors. In a little reminiscence of the club's 
memorial days, Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz has said : — 

"Who will ever forget the tributes of James Freeman 
Clarke, Frederic Hedge, William H. Channing, Elizabeth 
Peabody, and the glorious anthems of Christopher P. 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 473 

Crancli? At the centenary of the birth of Washington 
AUston, . . . poems, letters, and reminiscences gave us a 
beautiful insight into his character and life, while William 
H. Channing, in words of lofty beauty, described the setting 
of the glorious star. ... At the centenary birthday of 
Michael Angelo, . . . again, Mr. Cranch composed for 
us an ode which rings out as fresh and bold as the 
' David ' on San Miniato. . . . We waited not till the 
golden bowl was broken or the silver cord loosed to ex- 
press our love for that embodiment of human sympathy 
and broad thought, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody ; but 
while she was still in the vigor of her work, we bade her 
to a feast of recognition. She said she felt as if she 
were dead and meeting her ideal ; we felt as if we were 
holding up an ideal of true womanhood to ourselves." 

The liistory of this club is almost an epitome of the 
social and literary history of the last quarter of tlio 
Nineteenth century in Boston. 

" The City of Beautiful Ideals ! " This phrase may 
well be held as synonymous with Boston. " The Puri- 
tan Fathers believed New England 'charged with a 
divine mission to show the world what human society 
might be when governed by constant devotion to the 
revealed law of God,' " says Prof, Barrett Wendell ; 
and it is only from this foundation of faith and prayer 
and devotion to spiritual ideals, that the Boston of the 
Twentieth century can be estimated. The two regions 
of thought and of action have met and mingled in the 
forces that have developed the Puritan town, which 
John Winthrop found a paradise because there he 
"could enjoy God and Jesus Christ," into the great 



474 BOSTON DAYS 



cosmopolitau city of the present. But it is impossible, 
as Phillips Brooks once said in one of his great dis- 
courses, to separate those two phases. " It is impos- 
sible," said Dr. Brooks, "to say to the business man 
that he shall live only in the region of action ; it is 
impossible to say to the scholar that he shall live only 
in the region of thought, for thought and action make 
one complete and single life. Thought is not simply 
the sea upon which the world of action rests, but, like 
the air which pervades the whole solid substance of 
our globe, it permeates and fills it in every part. It is 
thought which gives to it its life ; it is thought which 
makes the manifestation of itself in every different ac- 
tion of man." It is thought which, in both its early 
planting and in the golden age of genius, so magnetized 
the Boston atmosphere that gods and heroes still seem 
to haunt the shade of the waving elms on the historic 
old Common, and voices that bear divine messages for- 
ever thrill the air. If the dawn of the Twentieth cen- 
tury reveals more exclusively the age of action, it is 
that action which is the expression and fulfilment of 
thought of the Nineteenth century. 

Sylvester Baxter, a poet of exquisite touch and a 
man of letters whose fine power is winning wide recog- 
nition, is also contributing to the Twentieth century 
incalculably important results in his effective work for 
park extension and other civic improvements that en- 
hance the beauty of Boston. 

A true poet of the nobler life of the new and untried 
century is Alice Brown, who, though a novelist and 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 475 

essayist, finds her most perfect expression in poetry. 
The " Hora Christi " by JMiss Brown is worthy of artistic 
immortality. In it one stanza reads : — 

" lu cloistered aisles they keep to-day 

Thy feast, living Lord ! 
With pomp of banner, pride of song, 

And stately sounding word. 
Mute stand the kings of j)ower and place, 

While priests of holy mind 
Dispense Thy blessed heritage 

Of peace to all mankind." 

The " City of Beautiful Ideals " is glorified anew by 
the dawn of a group of new and younger writers who 
are proving that romance and poetry are not dead ; that 
Pan is still to be surprised lurking beneath the waving 
elms of the old Common. And among these Lindsay I. 
Swift, the author of that delightful book on " Brook 
Farm ; " Alice Stone Blackwell, a poet whose poems 
hold genuine appeal to art ; Vida D. Scudder, whose 
fine work in literary criticism holds an unique place; 
Katherine Eleanor Conway, a poet of true gifts and a 
novelist of growing power ; Helen Choate Prince and 
Laura A. Richards, — are all names that are winning in- 
creasing recognition in their contribution to the progress 
of literature. INIrs. Richards, although a resident of 
jVIaine, was Boston born and bred and must be claimed 
in the Boston group, both as one of the lovely and 
accomplished daughters of JNIrs. Julia Ward Howe, and 
as an author whose work is always published in this 
city. 



476 BOSTON DAYS 



In the latter years of the Nineteenth century a re- 
markable organization was founded by Edwin D. Mead, 
LL.D., — the Twentieth Century Club, of which Mr. 
Mead is the president and the inspiring leader. Mr. 
Mead is widely known as one of the ablest interpreters 
of the philosophy of Kant, and one of the most entranc- 
ing of literary lecturers, as well as editor and essayist 
of scholarly fame. Mr. Mead's club contributes, in the 
most varied far-reaching and effective ways, to culture 
and to the ever-growing development of beautiful ideals, 
— of individual life and of citizenship. To Edwin D. 
Mead, supported by this noble organization, was due the 
ceremonial celebration of that memorable INIidnight 
of 1900-01, when the old century went out and the 
new^century came in. The celebration of this memorable 
hour was one of significant and impressive beauty. It 
marked the initiation of a still higher development of 
the City of Beautiful Ideals, — of a period suggested in 
the lines of Stephen Phillips : — 

" I will make me a city of gliding and wide-wayed silence, 
With room in your streets for the soul." 

The scene of that midnight was one to live in 
memory. On a balcony in front of the State House 
on Beacon Hill stood the Rev. Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale and others of the clergy, with Mr. Edwin D. 
Mead and a group of invited guests. The Common 
below was thronged with people who, with one 
accord, welcomed the new century by singing the 
hymn, — 



DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 477 

*' O God, our help in ages past. 
Our hope in worlds to come, 
Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
And our eternal home." 

Reverently this great concourse of people listened as 
Dr. Hale, uplifting his voice in prayer, consecrated the 
historic hour and the years that waited, just over the 
threshold of this mystic midnight, with all their un- 
known potentialities, with their new and greater mes- 
sage to Humanity. Then, with a great fanfare of 
trumpets, the Twentieth century was ushered in ; and 
the populace who welcomed it, standing hushed and 
reverent under a sky all aflame with stars, while the 
deep-toned bell of old King's Chapel chimed the solemn 
strokes of the knell of the Nineteenth century and the 
greeting to the Twentieth, — the entire vast throng 
must have seemed to hear on the air the words of the 
poet : — 

"Lo! now on the midnight the soul of the century 
passing, 
And on midnight the voice of the Lord ! " 



INDEX 



Abbey, Edwin A., 423. 

Adams, Charles Follen, 450. 

Hon. Charles Francis, 81. 

Oscar Fav, 454. 

Sarah Holland, 441, 442. 

Agassiz, Elizabeth Cary (Mrs. Louis 
Agassiz), 350, 351. 

Louis, 18 ; journey of, to the 

Andes, 19; poem of Dr. Holmes 
to, 20; death of, 20. 

Alcott, Amos Bronson, 128 ; esti- 
mated by Frothinghara, 128 ; birth 
of, 129 ;" gifts of, 130, 131, 132 ; in 
home life, 133 ; favorite authors of, 
134, 135; sonnets of, 135; school 
of, 137; Fruitlands, experiment of, 
described by Emerson, 139, 140, 
141, 142, 143 ; poems of, 144, 145, 
146; family life of, 153, 154; real- 
izes dream of an Academe, 164, 
165; philosophical teachings of, 
166, 167, 168 ; Emerson character- 
ized by, 184. 

Louisa May, diary, records of, 

79; childhood of, 147; early ex- 
periences of, 147, 148 ; character of 
work, 149 ; diary, extracts of, 150, 
151 ; fame of, 152. 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 434, 436; 
art of, 437; lines from, 437, 438, 
439. 

Alger, Rev. Dr. William Rounceville, 
353. 

Allston, Washington, 182. 

Alvary, Herr, 395. 

Ames, Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon, 
words of, on Phillips Brooks, 342 ; 
sermons of, 468, 470, 471. 



Ames, Fanny B. (Mrs. Charles Gor- 
don Ames), 472. 

Anagnos, Julia Romana, nee Howe, 
(Mrs. Michael Anagnos), 183, 184. 

Aristotle, 178. 

Arnold, Matthew, visits Boston, 325; 
lecture of, on Emerson, 372, 373. 

Atlantic Monthly, The, founding of, 
227, 228. 

Authors' reading, 450. 

B 

Bacon, Delia, 58; arduous life of, 
99; Hawthorne's characterization 
of, 60. 

Balzac, Honore de, 344. 

Bartol, Rev. Dr. Cyrus, 31, 169. 

Bates, Arlo, 448. 

Charlotte Fiske. see Rog^. 

Baxter, Sylvester, 474. 

Beacon Hilt, 475. 

Bernhardt, Sarah, comparison of, 
■with Duse, 393. 

Bierstadt, Oscar F., 420. 

Blackwell, Alice Stone, 475. 

Blake, Mary E. (Mrs. John G. Blake), 
446. 

Booth, Agnes (Mrs. John B. Schoef- 
fel), 392. 

Edwin, 430. 

Edwina (Mrs. Grossman), 430. 

Boston, description of, in the "for- 
ties," by Dr. Hale, 265, 266; famous 
groups in, 100; Latin Quartier of, 
352. 

Bo.^tonians, the summer homes of, 
81, 82. 

Bradstreet, Anne, 23. 

Brema, Marie, 395. 



480 



INDEX 



Brimmer, Dr., 426. 

Brooks, Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips, called 
to Trinity Church, 325; associ- 
ates of, 827; love of nature, 328; 
wide related ness of, 329 ; ministry 
of, 333, 334, 377; special charac- 
teristics of, 334; periods of work, 
335, 336; social nature of, 337; 
called to the Episcopate, 339; per- 
sonal traits of, 340; Dr. Ames on, 
342; influence of, 348. 

Brown, Alice, 474. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, sonnets 
of, 85. 

Brunswick, the Hotel, 328, 400. 

Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, 110. 

Butterworth, Hezekiah, 453. 



Cabot, James Eliot, 118. 

Carlyle, Thomas, marriage gift of, to 
Mrs. Emerson, 234. 

Channing, Eva, 472. 

Chapman, Maria Westman, described 
by Miss Martineau, 64. 

Chatterji, Mohini, 356. 

Chavannes, Puvis de, 428. 

Cheney, Ednah Dow, Theodore 
Parker's opinion of Alcott related 
by, 140. 

Child, Lydia Maria, nee Francis, 
beautiful temperament of, 60 ; ex- 
perience of, 61,63, 64, 420; Whit- 
tier's estimate of, 421. 

Church of Disciples, founding of, 48 ; 
469. 

Church, " Old South," 369. 

Trinity, 424. 

" City of Beautiful Ideals," 472. 

Claflin, Mary (Mrs. William Claflin), 
417, 418. 

Hon. William, 417; early life 

of, 418; John Hancock estimated 
by, 419. 

Clapp, Henry Austin, fine dramatic 
criticism of, 392. 

Clarke, Rev. Dr. James Freeman, 
48; "Ten Great Religions" of, 
49; Dr. Holmes' poem to, 54; 



friendship of, for Margaret Fuller, 

55; letter of Dr. Holmes to, 250, 

251. 
Clough, Arthur Hugh, visit of, to 

Boston, 85. 
Club, the New England Woman's, 

472. 

the Papyrus, 447. 

the Saturday, 229. 

the St. Botolph, 430. 

the Transcendental, 3. 

the Twentieth Century, 474. 

Concord, the idyl of, 163; famous 

people of, 104, "l05. 
Conway, Katherine Eleanor, 355, 446. 
Cranch, Christopher, 472. 

D 

Dall, Caroline, nee Healey, tran- 
scendentalism defined by, 30. 

Damrosch, Mrs. Leopold, 406. 

Walter, 394; directive power 

of, 396; produces opera of "The 
Scarlet Letter," 403, 404, 405; 
creative power of, 409. 

Davids, Rhys, 390. 

Deland, Margaret, 431. 

Denison, Rev. John, 343. 

'• Deserted House, The," 185. 

" Dial, The," 21. 

Diaz, Abby Morton, 418, 472; early 
work of, "420, 421. 

Dickinson, Emilj', 118. 

Dolbear, Prof. Aaron E., 361. 

Dole, Nathan Haskell, 448. 

Uom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, visit 
of, to Boston, 20. 

Donald, Rev. Dr. E. Winchester, 
call of, to rectorship of Trinity 
Church, 347; sermons of, 347, 348. 

Douglass, Frederick, remark of, at 
funeral of Wendell Phillips, 72. 

Duse, Eleanora, comparison of, with 
Bernhardt, 392. 



Ebenschuetz, Riza, 398. 
Elliott, John, decorative painting of, 
406. 



INDEX 



481 



Elliott, Maud, nee Howe (Mrs. John 

Elliott), 269. 
Emerson, Ellen, 116. 
Mary Moody, 112, 113, 114. 

Ralph Waldo, letter of, to 

Whipple, 8; letter of, to Elizabeth 
Peabod}', 21; letter of, to Sophia 
Peabody, 28; poetry of, 110; col- 
lege daj's, 115; describes Concord, 
115, 116; letter of, to his wife, 
117; letter of, to Margaret Fuller, 
117; impressions of Alcott, 118, 
120,122; Margaret Fullers words 
of, 124; letter of, to Whipple, 124, 
125; poems of, 125, 126, 127; letter 
of, to Sophia Hawthorne, 163, 164; 
home of, 179; death of, 185, 186; 
appreciations of, 186, 194; grave 
of, 190; letter of Felton's to, 230, 
231; letter of, to Whipple, 231; 
personal life of, 232, 235. 

Ruth, nee Haskins (Mrs. Wil- 
liam Emerson), 111, 112. 

Rev. William, 108, 

F 

Felton, Cornelius C, letter of, to 
Emerson, 230, 231. 

Field, Rev. Father, 469. 

Fields, Annie, nee Adams (Mrs. 
James T. Fields), 219, 439 ; 440. 

James T., 100, 205. 

Fischer, Emil, 398. 

Fiske, Dr. John, 364; 365; Darwinian 
interpretation of, 368, 369. 

Forbes, Edith, nee Emerson, 116. 

Frothingham, Rev. Octavius B., 
estimates Emerson's "Nature," 24. 

Fuller, George, 426. 

Margaret, nee Fuller, Countess 

d'Ossoli, 32; 33; marriage of, 34; 
personality of, 35, 36 ; estimate of, 
by James Freeman Clarke, 37, 38 ; 
meets Emerson, 39 ; characteriza- 
tion of, by Emerson, 40 ; 86. 

G 

Gadski, Johanna, appearance of, in 
opera of " The Scarlet Letter," 395. 



Garrison, William Lloyd, 23; esti- 
mate of, by Col. Higginson, 66. 

Gordon, Rev. Dr. George A., 468. 

Gould, Benjamin Apthorp, Observa- 
tory at Cordova founded by, 388; 
389 ; poem of Holmes addressed to, 
389; high rank in science, 390. 

Grant, Judge Robert, 435, 436. 

Greeley, Horace, 310. 

H 

Hale, Rev. Dr.. Edw^ard Everett, 

Boston in the "forties" described 
by, 265, 266; 277; ancestry of, 280, 
281; important work of, 234, 254, 
284; reads "My Double," 451; 
Twentieth century welcomed by, 
475. 

Lucretia, 434, 435. 

Susan, 435. 

Hancock, John, 8; 419. 

Harris, Hon. William Torrey, LL.D., 
lecturer on Aristotle, 178; interpre- 
tation of Emerson, 171 ; lectures of, 
173; lines to, 197, 198. 

Harvard, Rev. John, 419. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 155; 156. 

Madame, 158. 

Nathaniel, Whipple's visit to, 

22 ; experience of, at Brook Farm, 
22, letter of, to Sophia Peabody, 
30; relations with Elizabeth Pea- 
body, 86; letters of, 155, 156, 159, 
162, 163; Longfellow's poem on, 
160, 

Sophia, nee Peabody (Mrs. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne), simplicity 
and loveliness of, 22; Longfellow's 
letter to, 161; letter of, to Long- 
fellow, 162; returns to London, 
164. 

Rose. See Lathrop. 

Hedge, Dr. Frederic Henry, 122; 123. 

Hemenway, Mary, aid of, to John 
Fiske, 367 ; home of, 369 ; charac- 
ter of, 370, 371. 

Higginson, Col. Thomas Wentworth, 
450, 451. 



31 



482 



INDEX 



Hoar, Elizabeth, 121. 

, Hon. Samuel, 190. 

Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 360. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Emerson 
characterized by, 28; letters of, to 
Mrs. Whipple, "204; to Whipple, 
217, 218, 220, 221, 249, 250; poem 
of Lowell to, 237; key-note of 
character of, 238; views of, 238, 
239; conversation of, 241; family 
of, 244, 245, 246; works of, 242, 
248 ; letter of, to Motley, 248 ; let- 
ters of, to James Freeman Clarke, 
250, 251 ; letters of, to Lowell, 252; 
253; 255; personality of, 257 ; 258; 
250; 260. 

Hunt, William, 426. 
Hutchinson, Anne, 5. 
Howe, Julia, nee Ward, 23; 73; lec- 
tures of, before School of Philoso- 
phy, 179; lines of, 267; early life 
of, 269, 270, 271; studies of, 272, 
273, 274; work of, 274: reading 
by, 275, 

Maud. See Elliott. 

Dr. Samuel Gridley, poem of 

Whittier to, 100 ; 170; 2"67. 

Howells, Eleanor, nee Mead, 311. 

William Dean, Lowell's intro- 
duction of, to Hawthorne, 309; 
early poems of, 309 ; Lowell gives 
dinner to, 309 ; views of, 316, 317 ; 
sojourn of, in Venice, 311. 

Winifred, 311. 



"Impromptu, An," to Dr. W. J. 

Harris, 197, 198. 
Irving, Sir Henry, 392. 
Ives, Prof. Halsey C, portrait of, 430. 



James, Henry, pere, 312; ./?/.?, 

Prof. William, 360, 39i. 

Jewett, Sarah Orue, 443. 
Johns, Clayton, 406. 
Jones, Hiram K., 173, 174. 



K 

Kalisch, Paul, 398. 

Kemble, Fanny (Mrs. Butler), Long- 
fellow hears reading by, 85, 86; 
anecdote of, 219. 

Kernahan, Coulson, 305. 

King, Rev. Dr. Thomas Starr, 18. 

King's Chapel, 238. 

Kingsford. Anna, 356. 

Klafsky, Katherine, 400; 401. 

Knowlton, Helen M., observation 
of, on Elizabeth Peabody, 181, 
182; portrait of Winifred Howells, 
painted by, 311. 

Kossuth, entertained by Longfellow, 
83, 84, 



Lathrop, George Parsons, 156, 
157; 184; opera libretto of, 403. 

Rose, nee Hawthorne (Mrs. 

George Parsons Lathrop), 157. 

Lehmann, Lilli, 395. 

Lind, Jenny, 84, 85. 

Little, Brown & Co., 46, 128. 

Livermore, Rev. Dr. Daniel Parker, 
460; 462. 

Mary Ashton, nee Rice (Mrs. 

Daniel Parker Livermore), 455; 
genius of, 457; home of, 458; great 
lectures of, 463, 464, 465; oration 
of Lincoln, 466; influence of, 467. 

Lodge, Anna Cabot, 446, 447, 

"Lohengrin," 397. 

Longfellow, Frances, nee Appleton, 
22. 

Henry Wadsworth, 83, 85; let- 
ter of, to Whipple, 203, 204. 

Loring, General Charles G., 426. 

Lowell, Rev. Dr. Charles, 261. 

Institute, the, 286, 376, 

James Russell, letters of, to 

Whipple, 83; poem of, to Holmes, 
237; letter to, from Holmes, 252; 
255; meets Thoreau, 263; early 
youth of, 261, 262, 263, 

Maria, nee White, 264. 



INDEX 



483 



Lowell, Percivai, 386. 

Lunt, Adeline, nee Parsons, 297, 298. 

M 

Martineau, Harriet, estimates 
Margaret Fuller, 39. 

Mather, Cotton, 5; 7; 454, 455. 

McCosh, President, 179. 

Mead, Edwin, 474, 475. 

Larkin G., 311. 

Meeker, Nathan Cook, association 
with Horace Greeley on " Tribune," 
310; town of Greeley, Colorado, 
founded by, 310. 

Ralph, charming style of, 310. 

Michael Angelo, 480. 

Michelson, Dr. Albert A., 373; great 
scientific work of, 374, 375. 

Monvel, Boutet de, 428. 

Motley, John Lothrop, 248, 251. 

Moulton, Louise, nee Chandler, cos- 
mopolitan life of, 302; 303, 304; 
poetic art of, 305; Kernahan's esti- 
mate of, 305, 306 ; 452. 

Munsterberg, Prof. Hugo, 390, 391. 

Myers, Frederic W. H., 364. 

N 

Nansen, Dr., 381 ; 382; Arctic night 
described by, 384, 385, 386. 

Nieriker, Louisa May, 136. 

Monsieur, 136. 

Nordica, Lillian, 402, 403. 

Norton, Andrews, views of, on Emer- 
son's "Nature," 25; 26. 

Prof. Charles Eliot, 119; Maria 

Lowell described by, 264; Lowell's 
letters edited by, 205; letter of, 
to Whipple, 290; Homer, Shak- 
speare, and Dante compared by, 
290; lectures on Dante by, 289, 
290; views of, on poetry, 430, 431. 

o 

*' Old Manse, The,"' 108. 
"Oracles of New England, The," 

179, 180. 
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 440, 447, 448. 



Otis, Mrs. Harrison G., 74, 75; re- 
ceptions of, on Washington's birth- 
day, 76 ; work of, in the Civil War, 
77^ 78. 

"Over-Soul, The," 25. 



"Parker, Memorial, The," 70. 
Parker, Theodore, 21; comparison 
of, with Savonarola, 21 ; referred 
to, by Mrs. Howe, 56; Mrs. Child's 
impressions of, 56, 57; early im- 
pulses of, 57 ; death of, in Florence, 
58. 

Parkman, Francis, remarkable na- 
ture of, 317, 318; methods of, 320; 
works of, 321. 

Parsons, Dr. Thomas William, 290; 
isolation of temperament of, 291; 
292; "Paradisa Gloria" of, 293; 
earlv life of, 295, 296 ; Dante trans- 
lations of, 299, 300, 301. 

Peabod}-, Elizabeth, 29 ; visit of, to 
Europe, 88; with Charlotte Cush- 
man in Rome, meeting of, 89; work 
of, in School of Philosophy, 169, 
170; letter of, to Alcott, 180; per- 
sonality of, 181, 182; characteriza- 
tion of, 183; Mrs. Howe's words 
of, 183 ; description of, 444, 445. 

Mary. See Mann. 

Sophia. See Hawthorne. 

the Sisters, 157. 

Peirce, Prof. Benjamin, poem of 
Holmes to, 225; lectures of, 226; 
scientific rank of, 222, 223; 224. 

Perabo, Johann Ernst, noble art of, 
307, 308; views of, 308. 

Pericles, 100. 

Phillips, Stephen, 478. 

Wendell, 23, 65; O'Reilly's 

poem on, 66 ; estimate of, by Col. 
Higginson, 66, 67; tablet on home 
oCi%; 69, 70; death of, 71, 72. 

Porter, Maria S., nee Alley, Mrs. 
Lunt characterized by, 297, 298. 

Pratt, John, 06, 136. 

Prince, Helen, nee Choate, 475. 

I Psychical Research, Society of, 360. 



484 



INDEX 



Public Library, the Boston, 421. 
Putnam, Herbert, 421. 
Pythagoras, 177. 

Q 

QuiNCY, Dorothy ("Dorothy Q."), 

80. 
Quincy, Col. Edmund, 79. 



Radcltpfe, College of, 357. 

Radical Club, the, 276, 277, 278. 

Raffaelli, 430. 

Richards, Laura A., nee Howe, 475. 

Ripley, Dr. George, 108, 109. 

Robinson, Edward, 426. 

Roche, .James Jeffrey, 446. 

Roge, Charlotte Fiske, 7iee Bates, 450. 

" Royal Guest, The," 271, 272. 

Royce, Prof. Josiah, 364. 



St. Gaudens, Augustus, impressive 
statue by, 4. 

Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin, 121; 
poem of, before School of Philoso- 
phy, 175 ; 176 ; lectures of, 179 ; 
characterization of Emerson of, 
191, 192; translations of, 472. 

Sargent, John S., 427, 423. 

Savage, Rev. Dr. Minot J., 57; 360. 

"Scarlet Letter, The," 84; opera of, 
407, 408, 409. 

Scudder, Horace, 228. 

Scudder, Vida D., 475. 

Sedgwick, William E., 391. 

See, Dr. T. J. J., 376; astronomic.nl 
discoveries of, 377 ; researches of, 
378; reverses theory of La Place, 
378; early life of, 329,330. 

" Sleepy Hollow," 114. 

Snider, Denton J., 197. 

Sonnets, Alcott's, 135. 

Spofford, Harriet, nee Prescott, 229, 
30G. 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence, poem 
of, before School of Philosophy, 



175; Whittier estimated by, 416, 
417. 

Stone, Lucy (Mrs. Henry B. Black- 
well), enrly life of, 90, 92, 93, 94; 
personality of, described by Alice 
Stone Blackwell, 95; marriage of, 
96; home life of, 97, 98; character 
of, 99. 

Stowe, Harriet, nee Beecher, 219, 419. 

Swift, Lindsay L, 475. 

Symonds, Arthur, 472. 



" Tannhausek," 401. 

Tasso, 39. 

Temple Place, 353. 

Terry, Ellen, 392. 

Thaxter, Celia, 443, 444. 

Thoreau, Henry David, Emerson's 
estimate of, 105. 

"Threnody," 116. 

Ticknor, Anna Eliot, 348, 349. 

Caroline, 350. 

Prof. George D., 78. 

•■'Transcript, The," relates occur- 
rence at authors' reading, 453. 

" Tristan and Isolde," .399. 

Twentieth Century, the, midnight 
inauguration of, on Boston Com- 
mon, 476. 

u 

" Uncle Tom'.s Cabin," 84. 



Very, Jones, 40 ; faith of, 41 ; char- 
acterized by Miss Peabody, 42; 
characterized by Emerson, 43, 44, 
45; Dr. Hale on, 46, 47, 48. 

Vivekananda, Swami, 358. 

w 

Wagner, Richard, 86, 399. 
Walker, Gen. Francis A., 448, 449. 
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart, nee Phelps, 
432; Longfellow characterized by, 



INDEX 



485 



433; seaside home of, 433, 434; 
note of, 434. 

"Wayside, The," 399. 

Wellesley, College of, 65. 

Wells, Kate, nee Gannett, 449. 

Wendell, Prof. Barrett, 454. 

Whipple, Charlotte, nee Hastings 
(Mrs. Edwin Percy Whipple), 
social circle of, 210; letter of 
Holmes to, 204, 205. 

Edwin Percy, 201 ; Elizabethan 

literature of, 202 ; letter of Sumner 
to, 202; Longfellow's letter to, 203, 
204; lettei of Edward Everett to, 
263 ; letter of, to Lilian Whiting, 

215, 216 ; Alcott characterized by, 
205 ; letters of Holmes to, 206, 217, 
218,220, 221, 260; letter of Emer- 
son's to, 231; letter of Curtis to, 
208; characterized by Whittier, 
207 ; movement to award Harvard 
degree to, 212; home life of, 210; 
characterization of, by Kate Field, 

216, 217. 



Whipples, the, 22. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 410; po- 
tent influence of, 411; felicitous 
expressions of, 412; letter of, to 
Holmes, 412, 413; letter of, to 
Whipple, 414; noted reception to, 
by Mrs. Claflin, 417. 

Winter, William, 451. 

Winthrop, Hon. Robert Charles, 11; 
ideal life of, 11, 12; public recep- 
tions of, 12; Phillips Brooks writes 
to, 12. 

Wolkonsky, Prince, 406. 

Wright, Rev. Dr. G. Frederick, great 
lectures of, 386; early life and 
work of, 387, 388. 



X 



Xenophon, 24. 



ZoRN, Anders, art of, 429. 



Cbc dorld Beautiful 

By LILIAN WHITING 



I know of no volumes of sermons published in recent years which 
are so well fitted to uplift the reader, and inspire all that is finest and 
best in his nature, as arc the series of essays entitled "The World 
Beautiful," by Lilian Whiting. — B. O. Flower, /n The Coming Age. 



Cbc CClorld Beautiful (first Series) 

i6mo. Cloth, $i.oo. Decorated cloth, fi.25. 
Comprising : The World Beautiful ; Friendship ; 
Our Social Salvation 5 Lotus Eating ; That 
WHICH is to Come. 

The world beautiful about which she writes is no far-off event to 
-which all things move, but the every-day scene around us filled by a 
spirit which elevates and transforms it. — Prof. Louis J. Block, in 
The Philosophical journal. 

No one can read it without feeling himself the better and richer 
and happier for having done so. — The Independent. 

Che CClorld Beautiful (Second Series) 

i6mo. Cloth, $1.00. Decorated cloth, $1.25. 
Comprising : The World Beautiful ; Our Best 
Society ; To Clasp Eternal Beauty ; Vibra- 
tions ; The Unseen World. 

The style is at once gracefijl and lively. Every touch is fresh. — 
Ziofi's Herald. 

Che Olorld Beautiful (Cbird Series) 

i6mo. Cloth, $1.00. Decorated cloth, $1.1^. 
Comprising : The World Beautiful ; The Rose 
OF Dawn ; The Encircling Spirit- World ; The 
Ring of Amethyst ; Paradisa Gloria. 

The thoughtful reader who loves spiritual themes will find these 
pages inspiring. — Chicago Inter-Ocean, 



Hfter f)er Death 

Cbc Story of a Suinmcr <* 

By Lilian Whiting, author of "The World Beau- 
tiful," etc. i6mo. Cloth, ^i.oo. Decorated 
cloth, $1.25. 

Comprising : What Lacks the Summer ? From 
Inmost Dreamland ; Past the Morning Star ; 
In Two Worlds ; Distant Gates of Eden ; Unto 
My Heart Thou Livest So ; Across the World 
I Speak, to Thee ; The Deeper Meaning of the 
Hour. 

My conviction is that every preacher, reformer, religious editor, 
and Christian worker should read the books by Lilian Whiting. — 
Rev. W. H. Rogers, in The Christian Standard. 

" After Her Death " has given me the light and help I have so 
long craved ; it has given me comfort and strength which no other 
book has ever done. — Cordelia L. Commore. 



from Dreamland Sent 

Tcr9€9 of the Life to Come /* ^ 

By Lilian Whiting. New Edition, with additional 

verses. i6mo. Cloth, extra, ^i.oo. Decorated 

cloth, I1.25. 

Lilian Whiting's verse is like a bit of sunlit landscape on a May 
morning. — Boston Herald. 

Graceful, tender, and true, appealing to what is best in the 
human heart. — The Independent. 

I never saw anything on earth before which looked so much as if 
just brought from heaven by angel hands as this new edition of " P'rom 
Dreamland Sent." In the golden sunshine of an Italian morning I 
have heard the silver trumpets blow. This e.xquisite book reminds 
me of them. — Sarah Holland Adams. 



Kate field ^ H Record 

By Lilian Whiting. Author of "The World 
Beautiful," "A Study of Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
ing," etc. With several portraits of Miss Field, 
including one by Elihu Vedder. izmo. ^2.00. 

She knew almost everybody worth knowing in her own genera- 
tion, not alone in America, but in England, and wherever Americans 
and Englishmen met on alien soil. She not only knew them, she be- 
came a vital episode in the story of their lives. — Ne%u York Herald. 

Miss Whiting modestly calls her book a "Record," but it can 
well lay claim to the title of biography, and excellent biography at that. 
It is a serious, earnest work, written around a fascinating subject. — 
Neiu York Commercial Ad-verther. 



eiizabetb Barrett Browning 

By Lilian Whiting. Author of "Kate Field, a 
Record," "The World Beautiful," "After Her 
Death," "From Dreamland Sent," etc. With 
portrait. l6mo. ^1.25. 

The most virile picture of Mrs. Browning in all our literature. 
... A distinctly valuable addition to our Browning literature. — New 
York Times. 

The leading facts of Mrs. Browning's life and a good analysis of 
her character and work. — Boston Transcript. 

Decidedly readable. . . . Brings the poet's art into vivid light 
and outlines the peculiarities both of her character and of her genius. — 
Chicago Tribune. 

A valuable contribution to literature, and a worthy interpretation 
of Mrs. Browning's life and works. — Los Angeles Herald. 



Vhc Spiritual Significance 

or, Death as an 6vcrit in Life ^ ^ ^ 

By Lilian Whiting. Author of " The World 
Beautiful," " Boston Days," etc. i6mo. Cloth, 
gi.oo. Decorated cloth, gilt top, ^1.25. 
Comprising : The Spiritual Significance ; Vision 
AND Achievement; Between the Seen and the 
Unseen ; Psychic Communication ; The Gates 
OF New Life. 

It suggests and hints at the ultimate significance of scientific in- 
vestigation with relation to the totality of thought in a very fresh and 
suggestive way. . . . The spirit of her book, like that of its prede- 
cessors, is admirable. — T/ie Outlook. 

A book from her pen means new flashes of insight, a revelation 
of spiritual truth almost Emersonian in kind. — Chicago Chronicle. 



B ^ ^ ^ 



By Lilian Whiting. i6mo. Cloth, ^l.oo 7iet. 
Decorated cloth, $1.25 net. 

The careful and repeated reading of " The World Beautiful in 
Books" would be a liberal education. — Philadelphia Telegraph. 

It is like a Greek urn filled with priceless relics. Hundreds of 
brains, ancient and modern, are daintily picked of their best thoughts, 
and there is scarcely a page that is not enriched with some rifled treas- 
ure. It is, in fact, concentrated food for select minds. — Chicago 

Post. 

Little, Brown, ^ Company, publishers 

254 Washington Street, Boston, JMlass, 



1902 



,0 o 



.c^ 









"■^^> 


V 


/ 


-^^ 



■^^^■ '-^ .x:'' "^ ■^" ^^ 



c*-. 









,0 0, 









,v^^'^ 






: >.{";[:■ 






''^y. v-^' 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



017 298 197 5 



\)i».**i»>*s^ \.V^ ^♦" 



'^i J^ 




^ 



